Icarus
by dreams of infinities
Summary: Tony Stark offers an internship to Peter Parker, a teenager with a secret he is determined to uncover. Peter accepts. It turns out to be a mistake, for both parties involved, as Tony's hunt for the masked vigilante roaming Peter's home turns personal, and Peter's determination to keep his secret only brings danger closer to both of them.
1. look who's digging their own grave

**A/N:** And here we have my latest project: a slightly unrealistic story about Peter and Tony, with an attempt at a sort-of plot, because I love them and Infinity War broke me. Be prepared for Peter being adorable, Tony being Tony, angst, and a healthy dose of whump. (Healthy for whom, you may ask. Not for Peter, that's for sure.) It's set as if Civil War never happened, so Peter is about the same age he is in Homecoming, and has a pretty good grasp of his powers.

If you've read my previous stories, you should know how this works - if I get the interest, I keep publishing the chapters, so please review. I have more than seven chapters written out so I would really appreciate it if my time hasn't been wasted. I'm begging here.

Title and chapter titles from _Icarus_ by Bastille. It's a good song.

Chapters tend to be around 2.5-4K words, depending on how I'm feeling. This one's a little shorter and acts as a sort of prologue, if you will. Also, there are extracts from later chapters at the start of each one, just to give y'all an irritating teaser of things to come.

I'll update more or less weekly. The next chapter might come a little sooner so I can work out a regular posting schedule. See you then. If you like it. Please like it.

 **ICARUS**

 **1**

 **LOOK WHO'S DIGGING THEIR OWN GRAVE**

* * *

 _He doesn't know how long he lies there. Hours, maybe, but when he blearily cracks open his stinging eyes and coughs out a lungful of smoke, nobody is there to help him. He heaves himself into a sitting feeling, ignoring the dizzying swoop of nausea and lightheadedness, and squints in a futile attempt to see through all the smoke and dust._

 _Nothing._

 _He coughs again and tries to suck in some clean air, but it burns and makes him cough more and isn't very clean at all._

 _He half expects to see someone running towards him at any moment, taking him to an ambulance, giving him an oxygen mask, taking him to a hospital, but there is absolute silence._

* * *

Peter shifts nervously from foot to foot.

Now's his chance. He tries not to let the smashed, blackened metal scattered around freak him out _too_ much; he doesn't sense any danger and even if he did, Tony Stark's robot would probably kill the weird android before it could do anything anyway. Besides, small armies of robots with alien-enhanced technologies are not an irregular occurrence here in New York.

He _had_ been on his way from school, but he heard the commotion from a couple blocks over and ran to see what was going on. His Spiderman suit was tucked safely in his backpack, just in case, but he had a feeling that he wouldn't need it. He was right, as it turned out. The Iron Man suit has done a pretty good job of dealing with the issue, though it is fairly obvious that Tony Stark himself is not in there. Such a small crew of robots is hardly a cause the scientist needs concern himself with - particularly since they barely seemed to _do_ anything, save for run over the foot of an overly curious old man who got a little too close. Someone obligingly called an ambulance for him, but now that the initial excitement of the whole scene has worn off, Peter is one of the only ones left.

Well, him and the Iron Man suit.

 _Here goes nothing_. Peter has been carrying the plans in his schoolbag with him for a while now, meaning to maybe drop them at Stark Tower and see if anything became of them. Though, of course, he imagines that Mr. Stark gets stuff like this all the time, so perhaps the whole idea is pointless. But Ned wants him to, and who is he to refuse to do a friend a favour?

"Excuse me," he calls, voice a little quieter than he would have liked, but at least he's actually capable of forming words.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Iron Man suit looks up. Crap. He hasn't thought this far ahead.

"I - er - well, you see, I - um - "

"Can't write autographs in the suit. Sorry, kid."

Peter wonders idly what technology Mr. Stark uses to make his voice sound like he's actually there. Supposedly, he has a ton of artificial intelligence technology, so perhaps that can transmit a sound just like his voice. Whatever he does, it isn't particularly helping Peter, who manages to remove his backpack and start fumbling around for the crumpled blueprints.

"No - er, no. See, we were studying Mr. Stark's suit in class and I noticed that - well, from the videos we looked at, anyway, and I'm sure he knows better than I do - but, I - um, I noticed that the suits seem to lose a lot of heat energy from the repulsors? So I was just, you know, messing around, and I did a little digging, and I - well, I'm rambling now, but do you think you could give these to Mr. Stark? Just so he could have a quick look?"

Lazily, the robot takes the plans from his outstretched hand and opens them up.

"Oh, it's okay, you can just give them to - "

Peter curses his stupidity to high hell as the faceplate of the suit lifts and the front splits apart to allow a man to step out. "M-Mr. Stark? Crap - I'm so sorry - I didn't mean to bother you, sir. I thought ... "

Mr. Stark, with his suit folding up automatically into a briefcase behind him, completely ignores Peter, which is probably for the best. Peter stands very still and tries to ignore the fact that he just said the word _crap_ in front of his ultimate inspiration. And the fact that his ultimate inspiration is _here_. Right in front of him. Reading something that Peter _wrote_.

 _You're all good you can do this you're Spiderman don't freak out everything's fine don't freak out._

The Spiderman thing, nerve-wracking though it is to try and keep his identity a secret _as well as_ not dying, really has been a major boost to Peter's confidence in recent months. Gone is the scrawny kid who wants to do stuff to save the world but can never quite manage it - here is a new Peter Parker, one who can fight and help people and oozes confidence from every pore. In his suit at least. Though he will admit that it lacks the aesthetics of other superhero suits, his cheap, plain red and blue tracksuit that he wears to fight crime instils in Peter a certain feeling of invincibility, of inability to be defeated. And for all the health class talks about loving yourself no matter who you are, he has to admit that the cool, suave façade of Spiderman is vastly preferable to weirdly smart, small, skinny Peter Parker.

Mr. Stark continues to read. Peter evaluates the merits of turning on the spot and sprinting in the opposite direction until he falls off the face of the Earth. It's a good thing the Earth is round, because if it wasn't, he would be well on his way.

"What's your name, kid?"

He jumps, startled. "P-Peter."

"Peter. Huh. You got a surname?"

"Parker," he mumbles, cheeks hot, palms sweating.

"And what school do you go to?"

"M-Midtown. Sir."

"Good school. Thanks for these." He waves the papers. "See you around, kid."

Without another word he flies off, papers in hand, leaving a shocked teenager staring open mouthed after him.

 _That was Tony Stark,_ Peter thinks, mind drifting and a little useless with the shock of it all. Maybe this is some kind of weird dream. Or he's on a wild acid trip because Flash slipped something in his water bottle at school or something. Although, from what he's heard, acid trips are a little more ... _psychedelic_ , and less like an extraordinarily clear simulation of some distant fantasy he once vaguely played out in his head. Ned is going to be astounded. Not that he did much of the actual work on the design; he mainly provided slightly distracting background music and watched over Peter's shoulder, interrupting from time to time with excitable comments such as, "Peter, you are _awesome_."

A flush still burns his cheeks. He can't work out whether he should be overjoyed, or horrified at his own social ineptness. Nor can he decide whether to skip patrol tonight to go and tell Ned about what just happened, and doubtless spend the majority of his evening celebrating by watching _Star Wars_ , or to tell his friend about the whole experience at school tomorrow, which would probably hurt Ned's feelings, but might save a few friendly citizens from losing their bags, cars, or worse.

At length, he deliberates on the best course of action, and - remembering that Ned's parents have confiscated his phone because he got a B in Spanish - decides to call Ned. In the morning, he'll tell him at school and pretend to have forgotten that the phone was confiscated. He feels a twinge of guilt at this, but reassures himself with the knowledge that if Ned knew Peter was Spiderman, he would be fully on board with Peter's ... extracurricular activities. (Not that swinging round the city saving lives is part of Midtown's curriculum. That would be pretty cool, though.)

He types out a quick message: _Dude, the craziest thing just happened. Call me._

Then he leaves a voicemail for good measure and ducks into an alleyway to pull on his costume. Its bagginess is not a good thing in terms of aerodynamics, but at least it means that he doesn't have to strip to his boxers in the street. The head of a decapitated robot stares at him as he changes, which feels wrong on many levels, but he doesn't want anyone to know he's been here, so he leaves it. The creepy people in expensive suits will come and tidy it up in a couple of days. Peter can remember watching them through his window after the aliens invaded New York.

He makes sure that his bag is stashed where it can't be seen and that his web shooters are correctly attached to his wrists before he leaps up into the air. Safety first, right? After all, it's no use being able to fight the bad guys if you miss a building when you've punched someone in mid air and then fall 50 storeys into a river but the water isn't deep enough so your head hits the bottom and you die anyway. _Not_ that Peter has ever dreamed about something so oddly specific happening to him. That would be weird.

Peter engages in an idle daydream for several minutes as he swings through the streets, in which Tony Stark loves Peter's designs so much that he uses them and then invites Peter to join the Avengers as a cool scientist guy, with none of them knowing that he's actually secretly Spiderman as well.

Then he comes across two screaming women, one of whom may or may not be attempting to steal the other's bag. Trying to work out the best course of action, he shoots a web which sticks to the handbag and jerks it up into the air, out of reach. A perfect solution.

Well, it _would_ be a perfect solution, except neither woman is prepared to relinquish her hold on the bag, and, shrieking, they are launched up into the air with the bag. Peter's swing is interrupted by the extra weight and he ends up dangling helplessly with one arm holding himself by two lines of web to two buildings and one arm holding the women off the ground. The webs holding him creak dangerously. "Well, crap," he says, though it is mainly directed at himself, as the two women do not stop arguing after the initial shock wears off, even as they hang thirty feet above the ground and clutch at a single handbag for dear life. This must be quite some fight.

 _Honestly. People have no respect for superheroes these days._

Peter contemplates his predicament for several long moments while his shoulders threaten to pop out of their sockets. Then he manages to awkwardly shoot another, longer, web at the handbag, release his hold on the original web, and drop the handbag, with the women attached, until they are bouncing on the elastic webbing about a foot off the ground. Both release their hold on the bag, relieved, and land on the street without pausing their shouting match. Then they start to walk away.

"Hey, wait, your bag - " Peter starts to shout, but his webs, having been relieved of the weight of two grown women, ping back to their usual length and he flies up without warning into the air. The wildly swinging handbag manages to knock down a small child wondering along the street with his father. _Oops._ He manages to right himself, and swings down to the ground, picking the child up before he or his father have even noticed anything has happened. The child stares up at him, eyes watering.

 _Well, crap,_ Peter thinks again, but he doesn't say it out loud this time, because there's a kid in front of him. Instead, he rummages around in his pocket, digs up a single chocolate, hands it to the child, and sprints off after the still arguing owner of the handbag.

It's a cheap knockoff Chanel, he sees. Probably not worth fighting over anyway. Then he curses himself for thinking like Aunt May and swings off.

He passes several hours like this before calling it a day and returning to the alleyway he left his bag in. It hasn't been stolen, which is good, and he shrugs off his old tracksuit and shoves it to the bottom of the bag. Then he emerges, running his fingers through his dishevelled hair. It's by now seven in the evening and May will be at this point aborting her attempt to cook dinner and calling for takeout. He feels a little guilty for staying out this late each night - saying that he is at various different places each night won't work forever, and if he, say, loses track of time, and she calls Ned's mother to tell him to come home? Well, then he's screwed.

Not to mention the fact that he hardly ever sees his best friend any more. Peter spends almost every evening after school out patrolling, giving various excuses - _I have family coming to stay_ (to which Ned was too polite to reply, _Peter, you live with your entire family_ ); _I don't feel too good tonight_ ; _I'm grounded, sorry_. And Peter misses Ned - he really does - but his friend is _safe_ and not about to be mugged or stabbed in a back alley, and people out there ... well, they could _die_. And if Peter is able to stop that, and he doesn't? That's his fault. He might as well have killed them himself.

Peter enters his apartment in a daze of thought. "Hey, Aunt May," he calls, carefully shutting the door behind him and then entering his hopelessly untidy bedroom. He tosses his school bag on his bed and gets out his Spanish homework.

"Hey," May replies, from a cloud of smoke in the kitchen. "Good day?"

"Yeah, I guess."

He closes his bedroom door in an attempt to shut out the smell of burning, and sits down. The words might as well have been in Greek, for all they meant to him. Every minuscule word on the page seemed to blur into one meaningless smudge of black.

He is so screwed. When is the last time he's managed to sleep for more than five hours in one night? Being a superhero all afternoon means he has to do his schoolwork late at night, and then he's tired, and then it takes longer, and then he struggles to get to sleep at the best of times because he's so stressed out and wired up from patrolling.

To outsiders, being a superhero sounds all romantic and perfect, but in reality ... it's _exhausting._

And, somehow, really, really lonely.

Peter gives up on his homework, sets an alarm for 4 in the morning to finish it before school, and slumps onto his bed, fully clothed. His meeting with Tony Stark is all but forgotten. For once, he falls asleep within minutes.


	2. and what will you have left?

**A/N:** I'm back! Thank you all for the lovely response to the first chapter. I'll be posting on Friday evenings from now on - that's probably different in all your time zones (I live in the UK), but you get the idea.

Thanks in particular to my wonderful reviewers: Fanatic2018, FanGirlForever19, EmilyF.6, yunyingg, Guest, catlover2976, and LoonyLovegood1981. You guys are my heroes.

Apologies for any mistakes; I don't have a beta reader and I'm a terrible proof-reader because I have such a short attention span.

Enjoy.

 **ICARUS**

 **2**

 **AND WHAT WILL YOU HAVE LEFT?**

* * *

 _Tony lunges forwards and grabs the mask._

 _"Please! Don't!"_

 _"Give me_ one good reason _why not!" Tony's shouting now. He doesn't care. But his hand stays where it is, and does not pull off the mask._

 _"I have a family to protect! Don't you get that? If you reveal my identity to the whole world, and there's a criminal out there who wants to manipulate me, and he takes my family, what then? I'm not like you, Mr. Stark; I don't have loads of money to spend on private security to protect them or whatever. So say one day a murderer comes to my apartment and I'm not there to stop them - what if my family gets killed? Then I'm all alone, and I don't have anyone. How am I meant to protect people if I can't even protect my own family?"_

* * *

Peter has his alarm turned to its lowest volume setting, but its blaring, obnoxious ringing still sends his enhanced senses haywire and he tumbles out of bed in surprise the second it starts ringing. He slams his hand on it, eyes bleary, and it stops. _Crap_. He still has homework to do. And he's starving. He runs his fingers through his hair and picks himself up off the floor. A bag of Chinese takeaway sits just inside his door. _Bless Aunt May._ He doesn't care that the food is stone cold; he wolfs it down immediately. Ever since he was bitten, he's been five times as hungry. It's the enhanced metabolism, he supposes.

He sits down and stares at his Spanish notebook, feeling only slightly more capable of coherent thought than the night before. Then -

 _Holy shit! He met Tony Stark!_

For no real reason, Peter races to his window on the off-chance that Iron Man is outside. Of course he isn't, but this fact does little to dull his excitement. Tony Stark took his designs for a new suit! Tony Stark said he went to a good school! What does Spanish even matter? This could be his whole future sorted out for him. His hands are shaking a little. A grin is plastered to his sleep-deprived face. Peter hasn't felt this way since he stopped his first robbery as Spiderman.

He scribbles barely legible notes on the paper in front of him for about an hour. Mr. Stark could be looking at his designs _right now_. He has to tell May. And Ned. Maybe Liz. No, that would stupid. She doesn't care about that. She just wants him to actually come to Decathlon practice. Which he definitely will, from now on. The more he can do to impress Mr. Stark, when he applies for a job at Stark Industries, the better. And maybe the extra knowledge will help him to find more ways to improve the Iron Man suit. That way, Mr. Stark will _have_ to employ him.

By the time all his homework is finished, it is six a.m., which means it's time to get ready for school. He tugs on a top with some obscure physics pun and a pair of jeans, then wanders into the kitchen, where he pours himself an enormous bowl of cereal. Even with last night's dinner in his stomach, he is starving. Aunt May comes in when he is halfway through his second bowl. "Morning," she says. "Did you sleep well? I came in with your dinner, but you were fast asleep." She laughs. "You were still in your shoes."

Peter grimaces. "Yeah. Thanks."

"Did you get all your homework done at Ned's?"

"Just about," he says, putting his bowl in the sink. Fifteen minutes later, he's out the door and heading down towards the subway.

The journey passes in the mindless blur that it does most days; too tired to really think, he sits and observes a minor dispute between a young couple. From what he can gather, she is trying to convince him not to tell anyone about their relationship. Peter's enhanced sight almost immediately zooms in on the tan line on her ring finger and quickly gathers why she doesn't want to be so public. Her boyfriend, a rather seedy-looking, sallow faced man, has apparently not caught on to the reason yet. Peter feels a twinge of sympathy, but something about the man makes him feel uncomfortable, so he tries not to become too invested in his woes.

Ned is waiting for him in the usual place. "Hey man, what's up?"

" _Dude_ ," says Peter, "the _craziest_ thing happened yesterday."

"Oh my God, did you get to see the fight? With Iron Man and those robots?"

Peter grins. "Keep going ... "

"Oh my God, did you kill one of them? Peter, that is _so cool_!"

"Uh ... no. But you know those plans we made a while back? For the Iron Man suit? The ones that absorbed the thermal energy back into the suit to use elsewhere?"

He watches as Ned's eyes widen and his mouth forms words that don't come out, and nods at his speechless friend.

"I gave them to him."

" _Peter!_ "

"I know!"

"That's - that's _insane_!"

"I know!"

"You _spoke_ with Tony Stark?"

"Yeah!"

"Like, you exchanged words?"

"Yeah! I was like, _Hey, man, I noticed you seemed to lose a load of heat energy from your suit,_ and he was like, _Okay,_ and then he took the designs, and then he was like, _These are really cool, what's your name,_ and I was like, _Peter Parker,_ and he was like, _What school do you go to,_ and I was like, _Midtown_ , and he was like, _That's a good school. See you around, kid_. It was _amazing_."

"That's _so_ cool."

"I know!"

Before the barely coherent conversation can continue, the bell rings, and the corridors become a blur of movement. Flash Thompson slams into Peter's back. "Whoops, sorry, Parker," he smirks, and swaggers off into the crowds. Ned calls something about seeing Peter at lunch, but they're both already being dragged away by the streams of people.

He's in Chemistry when the rumours start circulating. "Hannah said she saw _Tony Stark_ by reception this morning," one girl whispers to the person next to her. By the time he's in gym class, it's all anyone's talking about. _Do you think he'll donate something? Or do an assembly? Or fund our chemistry projects?_ One kid swore blind that he'd heard Mr. Stark say he was going to select some kids to train in his Iron Man suits to become next-generation Avengers. But nobody seems to be able to provide any solid evidence to prove their theories, and by the afternoon, once Hannah has admitted that the man she saw was in a hat and sunglasses, many students agree that the man she saw actually might not have been Tony Stark at all. Sure enough, there are no announcements, no assemblies - it seems highly unlikely that the school would keep quiet about a visit from the famous scientist himself for this long.

It seems like no time at all passes before the bell rings for the end of the day, and Peter is out the door. He itches to go patrolling right away, but having the same routine every day can be dangerous. For one thing, all the criminals would learn when Spiderman was out patrolling and do their crime while he wasn't. But it would also make him predictable - if someone noticed that Spiderman came out of the same alley every day at three p.m., it would be easy for them to find out who he was. So Peter changes his schedule from day to day - sometimes he goes out straight after school, sometimes he waits a few hours, and sometimes he sneaks out once Aunt May has gone to bed.

Today, she's working a late shift, so she'll be gone when he gets home from school and he'll come home from his patrol before she gets back. That way, he doesn't have to explain what he's been doing. Hopefully, he'll manage to get all his homework done before he goes out.

Peter knows there is something weird going on the moment he enters his apartment building. He stops for a moment, but his spider senses do not seem to be telling him that there's danger - only that something isn't quite right.

The source of this discomfort reveals itself in the form of a large, very muscular looking man in a black suit, stood in front of Peter's front door.

"Uh," says Peter eloquently.

"Can we come in?" says the man, in a deep voice, except he doesn't really pose it as a question. Peter notices that there is another person stood behind the man, though he can't see their face.

"I don't have enough money to buy anything," Peter tells him quickly. May always told him that saying this will be much more likely to deter salespeople than simply telling them he doesn't _want_ to buy anything. After all, people who want your money lose interest pretty quickly when they realise you don't have any.

He tries to step around the man, but the other person steps out from behind the big guy and makes themselves known.

"Hello again, Peter Parker," he says. "Please let us in? Your neighbours are _very_ inquisitive."

Peter's mouth opens and then closes again. He looks down the hallway where Mr. Stark has gestured and sees Mrs. Hansen glaring at him. He waves mutely and her frown deepens before she shuffles into her own apartment.

"M-Mr. Stark," he says, his voice coming out about two octaves higher than usual. "Hi? I - um, what? What are you - ?"

"Your designs for my suit. I liked them."

"Y-you did?"

The big guy sighs. "Yeah, kid. That's why he's here, obviously."

"Right. Sorry."

They all stand there in awkward silence for several seconds before Peter realises they're both looking at him.

"So, are you going to let us in, kid?"

"Oh," he says. "I'm not sure - my aunt probably doesn't want - "

"I've already spoken to your lovely aunt on the phone. May, wasn't it? She said you'd accept, of course. Took a bit of convincing that it was me though. I had to send her a selfie of myself next to your plans. Holding today's _New York Times_. In front of an Iron Man suit."

Peter, by this point, feels so out of his depth that he might as well have started swimming in a pool so deep that the bottom was in another dimension. "What is going on?" he mumbles, blinking. "How - how did you get her number? Or my address? Wait - she said I'd accept _what_?"

Mr. Stark grins. "Why don't you let us in? I'm craving coffee so hard I might die of caffeine withdrawal in the next five minutes."

Whether or not he is telling the truth is too hard to discern at the moment; the situation is so surreal that Peter just unlocks his door and lets both men in. Naturally, the apartment is a mess. He gestures towards the couch and starts making some coffee while he frantically tidies breakfast dishes and all the other crap lying around. His hands are shaking a little with nerves and the only thing his brain can really think of is _Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!_

He hands both men cups of coffee wordlessly and stands staring at them. The big guys drains his cup in four large gulps, apparently immune to the fact that the water is _boiling_.

"Ask away," says Mr. Stark, carefully placing his coffee on the table.

Peter continues to stare.

"Okay. I'll do the talking. I got your aunt's number and your address from your school. You can get pretty much any information from a science school when you're a scientist."

"So that really was you that Hannah saw at school today?" He swallows and tries not to be freaked out by how easily the school released his personal information to a random stranger. Not that Mr. Stark was just _any_ random stranger.

Mr. Stark laughs. The other guy, who still hasn't shared his name, smacks his arm. "I _told_ you to be more careful," he hisses.

"Does the whole school know?"

Peter nods. "One guy reckons you were looking for trainees to become next-generation Avengers."

Mr. Stark laughs again, longer and harder this time. "Ouch. Tell them I'm sorry to disappoint them." Peter opens his mouth to question this, but Mr. Stark carries on, undeterred. "Which bring me on to why I'm here. I liked your designs."

Blink. Blink.

"I mean, they didn't work, but I'm still looking for where you went wrong. Which means they were some pretty advanced stuff. And I looked at some of your school reports - " Peter winces - "and all your teachers say that - well, that you're great. Stark Industries could always use another genius."

Blink. Blink.

"More than I want any rival companies to, anyway. D'you want an internship? You can come to the Tower after school. See how the labs work, maybe design some shit. I don't know. Mess around. I've never done any internships before. At least, not that I know of. I guess Pepper might have done some lower down in the company. Anyway." He looks straight into Peter's eyes. "What do you say?"

It's a big question. Most of Peter's brain screams at him to accept immediately, but a smaller, more rational part makes him stop. Even just spending an hour at the SI building per day would drastically reduce his patrolling time, and he has enough trouble finding time for homework as it is. What if someone gets killed while he's selfishly pursuing his own career as a scientist? Does that make it his fault? But then, he could find ways to improve his web fluid formula with Mr. Stark's resources. Maybe more. And an internship with Tony Stark himself would look great on his university application.

"Kid? We really don't have all day," says the other guy. He stands up. Mr. Stark continues to look at Peter.

"Your aunt already agreed to it all," he adds. "And Stark Industries will fund all of it. Everything you do. Travel costs, anything you eat there, et cetera. The food is awesome, by the way."

"But I, um, I have homework. Sir." Peter immediately curses himself for saying something so lame.

Mr. Stark bursts out laughing. "Come to the Tower tomorrow after you finish school. I'll see you there."

He stands up and the two men walk to the door.

"Bye."

Peter raises a weak hand in farewell. The door shuts hard enough to make the coffee in Mr. Stark's untouched cup splash onto the table below.

* * *

In an alleyway, two men are making an exchange. One gives the other a bag full of white powder. In return, he is given a very generously sized wad of cash.

Before much else can happen, a red and blue blur crashes into some nearby Dumpsters. It jumps out, revealing itself to be a young man in a red and blue tracksuit with a mask on his head. "Oops," he says cheerfully, and then catches sight of the two men. "Woah. Are you guys doing drugs?"

One of them (the one holding the bag of white powder) turns and starts to sprint out of the alley. Spiderman shoots a web from his wrist straight into the man's retreating back and tugs him backwards until he is back where he started, and pinned against the wall with webbing. The guy holding the money tries a different tactic and grabs Spiderman's outstretched arm, gripping it tightly and twisting it. Spiderman fires a web at his chest, which pins him against the opposite wall, but not before something cracks.

" _Ow_ , dude," he shouts, firing another web to stick his legs to the wall as well. "Not cool!"

He's glad he has a mask on to hide the pained expression on his face.

Trying to hide the fact that the guy did any real damage, he wanders over to the first man and snatches the bag of drugs out of his hand. "That's a lot," he remarks sternly, pinning the bag to the wall beside him with more webbing. "I hope you weren't planning on _using_ this stuff."

He passes a wide-eyed teenager as he swings out of the alley. "Don't do drugs, kids!" he says to the smartphone, which is recording everything. "Or adults," he shouts behind him as an afterthought. He hopes that part made onto the end of the video.

Swinging home on his injured wrist is painful, but not unbearable. He still makes it home in good time, and does his homework with a bag of frozen peas strapped to it. It doesn't feel broken (and if it was, the bone has already healed), but the bruising is pretty intense - the sort of bruising that will take a couple of days to fade completely. Peter makes a mental note to wear long sleeves tomorrow.

Homework finished, he turns on his phone and is met with a bombardment of messages.

 _The Almighty Darth Vader:_ Hey man! Mom gave me my phone back :D

 _May Parker:_ Peter, something weird just happened

 _May Parker:_ Don't freak out, but that scientist you like said he was going to drop by the apartment

 _May Parker:_ Tony Stark. The one with all the metal armour and shit

 _May Parker:_ Sorry didn't mean to swear

 _May Parker:_ He said he was going to give you an internship or something? Idk

 _[Unknown Number]:_ You can use this number to contact Stark Industries about the internship program. Responses are given by a computer. Our artificial intelligence is learning every day, but please use correct spelling and grammar in order to make your messages easily understandable. Do not use the number to send messages to any employees of Stark Industries. They will not be received. Do not send multiple messages at a time. Send only messages related to the internship. You will be given information about the internship on the first day. Report to Reception upon your arrival at the Stark Industries building.

 _May Parker:_ Just don't freak out

 _May Parker:_ Home soon.

 _Liz Toomes [to group: Decathlon ;P]:_ Hey guys, practice tomorrow is cancelled. See you next week.

Peter blinks. He's been signed up for the program already? Before he's even been given an answer? It must have been May. Mr. Stark said that she'd already given her permission - perhaps he took that as a yes. And Decathlon practice is cancelled ... that gives him extra time after school.

Logically, he knows that this is quite possibly the biggest opportunity he has ever been given. Accepting this internship could very well guarantee his college position, his job in the future ... and, he supposes, it will help his grades. Having access to all those labs can only be good for his science knowledge. All the projects he could do with the extra resources, all the help with his homework - he wouldn't have to search the results of experiments online. He could _do_ the experiments. And, Spiderman aside, what will he have left if he doesn't take it? He's given up all his extracurriculars, practically exiled himself from May and his friends ... soon, Peter Parker could quite feasibly become nothing. No one at all.

But however much Peter aches to accept, the voice in the back of his mind remains persistent: _What about Spiderman?_ Is Peter really so selfish that he will put a potential place in MIT ahead of the lives of all the victims of crime he saves every day? He can still get into MIT, after all. Interning at SI would just give him a boost.

The thing is, he knows he's smart. He knows that, deep down, he doesn't need this internship to succeed. He got into Midtown on scholarship through his own merit, without any help from a genius billionaire. Why shouldn't he be able to get into college?

May's still working, so Peter does the only thing he can think of - swallowing his worry over how Mr. Stark even got his number, he picks up his phone and calls Ned. He watches his screen idly ( _Calling The Almighty Darth Vader_ ) until his friend, loyal to the last breath, picks up on the third ring.

"Peter! Hey," he says, a little breathlessly, as though he ran to pick up the phone. "What's up?"

"Uh ... Mr. Stark came to my apartment and offered me an internship? And I don't know if I should take it?"

Ned immediately hangs up. Peter frowns at his phone until it starts ringing again. He picks it up.

"Ned?"

"Sorry, Peter, I just had to cut the connection because it clearly went wrong and I thought you said, _I don't know if I should take it_."

" ... Yeah?"

" _Dude!_ "

"It's just - "

" _Tony freakin' Stark offered you an internship and you don't know whether to take it?!_ "

Ned hangs up again. Frustrated, Peter picks up on the first ring and waits.

"That one was for comic effect."

"Next time you do it, I'm not picking up again."

Ned sighs. "Look, Peter, I know you're having a tough time at the moment, but _please_ take it. You'll regret it forever if you don't. _I'll_ regret it forever if you don't."

"I just feel bad - you made those plans, too - "

"Peter, we both know that's not true. Do you want to come over and talk about this in front of _The Empire Strikes Back_?"

Guilt twists like a cold knife in Peter's gut. They were meant to watch that together last week, but he had forgotten to turn up. No amount of apologies can erase the image of Ned's crestfallen face the next morning when Peter failed to deliver a reasonable excuse. But, somehow, he can't bring himself to face his friend right now. Not tonight. "Sorry, buddy. Maybe tomorrow night instead? May and I are going to dinner."

"Okay," says Ned lightly, but it's easy to tell that he's hurt. "See you at school."

"Yeah. Bye."

Peter's hand feels oddly heavy as he lifts it to end the call. Talking to Ned was a bad idea. It strikes him that there is _no one in the world_ who knows why he is struggling with this decision. No one who understands his situation. No one who can offer him a balanced argument for and against the internship with every reason he shouldn't. The only person he can talk to is himself. (They say talking to oneself is the first sign of madness.)

The only thing that can make Peter feel better is reminding himself what he's fighting for. He scrawls a note to May saying that he isn't feeling well and has gone to bed early, and not to disturb him please, before pinning it on his bedroom door, locking it from the inside, pulling on his suit and hurling himself through the window out into the night.


	3. living beyond your years

**A/N:** Happy Friday! Sorry this chapter's so short. Most of them are longer after this.

I'll keep this short and sweet: thanks as always to my wonderful reviewers - EmilyF.6, LoonyLovegood1981, and cat lover 2976 - you guys are my heroes. Thanks also to those of you who followed and favourited this story.

Enjoy.

 **ICARUS**

 **3**

 **LIVING BEYOND YOUR YEARS**

* * *

 _Hands shaking. He's scared. Look at your watch._ BREATHE.

 _"You gotta breathe for me, buddy."_

 _Peter's whole body judders with the effort. Tony barks a hysterical, humourless laugh._

 _"You can't leave me now, Spiderman."_

 _Eyes widen. Opening mouth to say something. A sort of wet gurgle instead of words. Lips coated with red._

 _He smoothes the boy's sweaty hair off his alarmingly pale forehead, wipes the blood from his cheek, says his name again._

 _Tears in his eyes. When did he last cry?_

 _Slowly, inevitably, eyes slide shut. No. Wake up. Wake up! "Peter._ Peter! _"_

* * *

In the end, it's May who persuades him.

"I changed my shift so I'll be able to drive you to Stark Tower for your first day," she says excitedly.

Peter doesn't have the heart to tell her that he's not going to do it. Not when she's looking at him with so much happiness and pride that her smile seems to split her face in half. He forces a grin onto his own face, because he _is_ excited - Tony Stark, without a doubt, is his hero, and no amount of sarcasm and ignored coffee is going to change that - but the guilt is rising in his chest already. _Don't think about it_. Spiderman can save a lot more people with the improved gear Peter can develop in Mr. Stark's labs. _And_ he can do longer patrols because the internship is a great excuse to be away.

So as he looks apprehensively at the Tower in front of him, he tries to push away the heavy feeling in his gut. _He's doing the right thing. He can do this._ May looks at him. "Do you want me to come in with you?"

"Don't worry. I'll be fine."

She smiles. "Your parents would be so proud of you, Peter."

Peter swallows. There is a lump in his throat and the same sting in his eyes that comes whenever people say things like that. _His parents._ The invisible ghosts watching over him that he's always fought so hard to please, the people who will never see what he has achieved, so that whatever he does, it never quite seems like enough for them. Because how can they _know_? How do they know that getting an A in chemistry would make his parents happy, when they could just as easily be angry at him because _everyone_ knows he could have gotten 100 percent, if he had more time to study and a better night's sleep before? How do they know that the Parkers, renowned scientists, wouldn't wish their son was just a little smarter, a little better at the subjects they excelled at as children? And the thing that hurts the most is knowing that they can never be proved right or wrong. No one can look at Peter's parents and ask them, _Are you proud?_.

But he doesn't say any of this. He just waits for the wave of grief and resentment at the world to pass before he hugs his aunt and walks away.

It's a fairly mild day, but a light drizzle fills the air, making it hard to see long distances. Though the rain feels light, Peter's clothes are already wet, and the gloomy streets are full of people rushing to get inside out of the unpleasant weather. Peter takes a deep breath, feeling the damp air fill his lungs slowly and holding it there until his chest starts to burn. Then he lets it out in one long, steady exhalation, watching a drop of water make its careless, meandering way down his jacket.

 _It's now or never, Parker_.

He steps into the lobby of the tower. It's enormous, to say the least: floor-to-ceiling windows fill it with light, even on a day like today, but classy lamps glowing white are strategically placed so the room is always well lit. White tiles pave the seemingly endless floor beneath his feet. There are plants dotted here and there - not enough to make it look cluttered or too much like a garden, but enough to add a splash of colour and greenery to the impeccably clean atmosphere. There are creamy white sofas to serve as seats on which to wait for appointments or service. On one wall, glass elevators move seamlessly up and down. There are pieces of art littered everywhere.

Peter blinks. _You can do this. You're Spiderman._

It occurs to him that Mr. Stark never told him what to do when he got to the Tower. The text message said to report to Reception, though, so he decides to start there. There's a plush red carpet leading up to the pristine desk, which appears to also be a fish tank. He eyes the tropical fish uneasily and can't help but feel grubby and out of place in this shining world of expensive suits and sleek white furniture.

"Can I help you?" the receptionist asks, with one arched eyebrow. They must get kids like Peter in here all the time, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tony Stark.

"Um, yeah - I'm here for the internship?" he says.

She frowns. "We only run internships during summer break. You have the wrong date."

It's mid-February.

"Mr. Stark said to come by today ... "

She peers down at him. Peter wishes he was a little taller. "Mr. Stark doesn't give out internships. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"Wait - I got the text message!" He rummages in his bag until he finds his phone. The screen looks back at him blankly. He's out of battery. He looks up at the receptionist. "Please could you just send him a message or something? Say that Peter Parker's here?"

"No need," says a voice behind him, and someone claps a hand on his shoulder. "Thanks, Estelle."

Peter whirls round. Tony Stark is stood behind him.

"Follow me," he says, ignoring Estelle's horrified scowl. As soon as they are out of earshot, he whispers, "Don't mind her. She's just got a lot to deal with behind that desk. The number of reporters is _insane_."

"H-How did you know I was down here?" Peter asks, fighting back wild excitement at the fact that Tony Stark just put a hand on his shoulder, and trying to take in all the sights of the building at once. They go through a door marked _Authorised Personnel Only_ and come to an elevator. It does make sense, he supposes, that Mr. Stark wouldn't want to use the elevators available to the general public.

"Facial recognition told me when you walked in. Here, look at the scanner." Peter does as he is told. There is a brief _bleep_ and hen the doors slide smoothly open. Mr. Stark does the same thing, then presses the button which says 47. Some of the buttons are marked in red - the key above the buttons says, _Red buttons are for floors only available with permission to access_. Floor 47 is one of these floors. "Normally I'd have you working here." He points at the button marked 28. "That's one of our research floors, and apparently where all the interns go. Who knew?" Peter blinks. "But I want you to take a look at these designs you made. See what we can do."

"Uh - "

"This isn't a permanent thing. Just for today, to see where you went wrong." He pauses. "Also, I have zero idea how to treat an intern. Usually someone else deals with this shit. Sorry. Didn't mean to swear. FRIDAY, clear Peter for Floor 47."

A cool female voice fills the elevator. "Done."

"Whoa," says Peter, looking around in surprise and curiosity.

"That's our resident AI. Her name's FRIDAY - you should be able to talk to her wherever you are in the building. She can answer any questions, show you how to get around, Google stuff for you ... hell, she can do all kinds of stupid shit. FRIDAY, do the horse noise."

An absurd noise fills the elevator - definitely made by a human voice, and barely recognisable as a horse noise. Not that Peter has really met all that many horses to compare it to. He jumps and then mentally kicks himself for looking like such an idiot. Mr. Stark's loud cackle doesn't much help matters either. A slow blush creeps onto his cheeks.

"This one time, I did it to prank Barton for ten hours straight. Just told FRIDAY to play it at random intervals whenever he was alone somewhere. Took him all day to figure out it was me ... " Mr. Stark continues to chatter amicably as the elevator glides to a smooth stop and they get out, without really seeming to care that his newfound intern is contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation. Peter is too busy reeling as the reality of his situation sets in. He's on the 47th floor of _Stark Tower_ , with _Tony Stark_ , who has prank wars with _Hawkeye_ ... what if some of the other Avengers are in the Tower right now, just a few floors above or below? This is _insane_.

" ... took another look at your plans. They're pretty impressive, you know. How long did you spend on them?"

Peter almost forgets to answer. They have entered an almost cavernous lab space, cluttered and untidy and _incredible_. There's an Iron Man gauntlet lying on the bench in front of them - just _lying there_! - and some kind of robot trundling around, picking stuff up and putting it down on different benches; the room is well lit, but not too bright, which is a mercy on Peter's enhanced vision; the air is cool and smells faintly of metal and motor oil - and scotch, though Peter doubts that anyone normal would be able to pick that up. There is a couch with a ragged-looking blanket and old pillow folded on it (does he _sleep_ in here? That's amazing, if weirdly personal) and work spread across almost every available surface, of which there are many.

"Um," he says, "a couple days after school, maybe? I did it at Robotics Club, before - um, before I quit."

"Why'd you quit?"

Peter turns around to see Mr. Stark on his hands and knees on the floor, rummaging for something underneath a workbench. He doesn't seem to care much about the answer, thank God. Feeling mildly uncomfortable, Peter looks down at the floor and mutters, "Too much homework," which has been his standard excuse for quitting every club so far. He wonders how long it will be before he gives up Decathlon as well. Will Liz hate him forever if he goes?

"Ha!" Mr. Stark, having progressed to having his entire head and upper torso under the table, attempts to stand up, slams his head on the table's underside, swears colourfully, and then crawls out backwards, clutching Peter's blueprints. "Dum-E's always putting stuff in stupid places. Sorry about the swearing."

"You don't need to apologise," Peter says, amused. "My aunt says worse." Then he claps his hand over his mouth. "Don't tell her I said that."

"I'll consider your request. As you can probably see, I don't have that much experience around kids."

"Mr. Stark, it's fine, sir - "

Mr. Stark's head snaps around to face him. "Okay. Let me lay some ground rules. First. You don't try and kiss the ground under my holy feet the whole time. I only make people I really hate do that. That means no calling me _sir_. My name is Tony. No sucking up to me. Calling this an internship is just a formality. I want to see what you know. So you're more of a consultant, I guess. An underage one. Second ... don't touch anything that looks like it can dissolve your skin. That's about all I can think of."

Peter tries hard not to look terrified.

"Third. You're allowed to talk. God knows I get enough of the silent treatment from Pepper. Speak!"

"Um ... okay."

Mr. Stark - _Tony_ \- unrolls the paper and looks at the drawings. Peter reaches out to take another piece of paper.

Stretching his arm pulls his sleeve back a little, revealing the ugly mess of purple and green and yellow that is his healing wrist, still bruised from yesterday's antics. _Well, crap_ , says Peter's incessant internal monologue, but it fails to provide anything useful to do, so he and Tony both just stare at it for a couple of seconds, as if that can magically repair the bruising, make it disappear, and maybe find a reasonable explanation for why it's there.

Tony is the first to break the spell. "Yeesh, kid," he says, pulling a face. "How did that happen?"

 _Think think think think think think think think_ \- "I - uh, I tripped over."

Silence. They both look at the unmistakable bluish finger-marks encircling his wrist. Then Peter clears his throat uncomfortably and pulls his sleeve down, Tony makes a sympathetic, if suspicious, noise, and they both turn back to the plans. They survey them awkwardly for a few minutes before a woman walks in.

"Tony?" she says, surprised. "Who's this?"

"Oh, hey, Pep. This is Peter, my intern. Peter, this is Pepper Potts. She basically just runs the whole company."

"Hi," says Peter.

"Tony, you don't _have_ interns. You don't like people. Also, our internship program runs in the summer break."

"Well ... Peter's my personal intern, I guess. We're taking a look at some suit designs. Right, Peter?"

"Uh, yeah," Peter mumbles distractedly, finding a pencil on the bench in front of him (this place could have been _made_ for him) and using it to redraw some wiring specs that look a little off. Is there too much resistance, maybe? Would different wiring materials work?

Pepper ignores him. "Tony, can I talk to you outside for a minute?"

"Sure. Just a minute, Peter."

Peter nods and pretends to busy himself with the work. Pepper leads Tony out of the lab and Peter listens to their conversation with interest, his enhanced hearing picking up on their hushed voices even through the door.

"Tony, what aren't you telling me? Is he your estranged son or something that you didn't know about? Because, obviously, he was born a long time ago and I'm not mad at you for that, but I think I deserve to know if you have a kid ... "

"He's not mine," Tony says firmly.

"Then why is he here? What's gotten into you? You're terrible with children!"

"I know, but - but this kid just walked up to me after I fought those drones the other day. And he thought I was just a drone, and he gave me these designs to improve my suit - and they're really good, Pep. _Really_ good, especially for a kid his age, without any access to my actual suits. And he's smart. I looked at his school reports. If he was a few years older, I would be working my ass off trying to get him to work for me."

"And you weren't even slightly intoxicated when you recruited him?"

A pause. " ... That's beside the point."

Peter should have known it was too good to be true. At least now he _does_ know.

"At least tell me you did a full background check. No school records of theft, no criminal associates, anything like that?"

"He's all clean. He'll be down on 28 most of the time, anyway."

"I hope you know what you're doing, Tony," Pepper says with a sigh. Peter can hear her heels clicking on the polished floor as she walks away.


	4. icarus is flying

**A/N:** Good evening, folks! This chapter has barely been proofread, so please ignore any mistakes. The action's starting to heat up now, so fasten your seatbelts.

Thanks as always to my beautiful reviewers: LoonyLovegood1981, NotCurrent, EmilyF.6, Wisdomsqueen, Stark staffie and fatinkimkai88. Y'all are my heroes. Thanks also to those who followed and added this story to their favourites list.

Reviews are my life.

Enjoy.

 **ICARUS**

 **4**

 **ICARUS IS FLYING**

* * *

 _Damn that kid. Damn that_ fucking kid _for working his way into Tony's heart, for getting under his skin so he can use his technology and stop him from getting too close to the truth, for blinding him to Spiderman's true identity - because now he knows, it's obvious. It's so obvious that Tony would laugh if he wasn't so close to passing out. As it is, he stumbles back against the side of his car, looks at his angrily beeping watch and reads with detached interest its glowing message to_ BREATHE _._

 _It feels as if he is underwater. His blood is roaring in his ears; his vision keeps slipping in and out of focus. His heart hammers wildly in his chest._

Panic attack.

* * *

It didn't take long after the first day of Peter's internship - three or four months ago, now - for him to start coming to the Tower more and more frequently - almost every day, in fact. Tony made it clear that he's welcome whenever he wants to come, and although technically Peter is meant to be working on Floor 28 on any day of the week he's there except Thursdays, when he comes up to Tony's lab, more often than not Tony finds himself wondering down to the research lab to see if his intern is there, and invite him up to join him. Whether he likes it or not, Tony is definitely becoming more attached to the kid - more interested in his wellbeing, what he's working on, his school life.

And it's not just Peter's endless excitement and enthusiasm. There's something else, that he can't quite put his finger on; something that makes Tony feel oddly protective over him. Because there's something not quite right about the kid. He's definitely hiding something, and the more apparent this becomes, the more uneasy Tony feels.

Some things, he keeps quiet about, for the sake of both of their sanity. The bruising, for example. After he noticed the livid bruising on Peter's wrist, the finger marks where it's almost certain someone grabbed him, Tony has been trying to keep an eye on him. Sure enough, some days he comes in favouring one leg, or moving one arm less than the other, or wincing and grabbing at his ribs as he turns or moves too quickly. On one occasion, Tony could see the concealer on his face, trying (and mostly failing) to cover a bruise blossoming across his jaw.

Then there are the more obvious occasions. Perhaps most memorable is the time Tony accidentally kicked a door behind him with too much force, and it slammed closed. Peter, who was deeply engrossed in a project, jumped about a foot in the air at the noise and clamped his hands over his ears with his eyes screwed shut for a good five seconds before he realised there was no danger. And there was the time Tony grabbed him by the arm to tell him something as he was leaving - not aggressively or overly tightly, but firmly enough - and Peter pulled away as smoothly as if he'd barely been touched. He's much stronger than he looks.

But however hard Tony tries, however many background checks he's done on May Parker and her records and all her associates, however many times he's hacked the Midtown School's database to see if there are any kids with criminal records, or records of violence or bully, there's nothing. He can't confront Peter with nothing.

" _This_ is what you've been working on?" Peter exclaims. "You've never even met Spiderman. I mean - have you ever even met Spiderman?"

"No, but I'm planning to." Tony's been tracking this guy for months now. To be honest, he's an almighty pain in the ass - the whole _secret identity_ thing is driving Tony slowly insane. "I'm hoping this will help persuade him to meet me."

"Why?" asks Peter, examining the red Spandex creation in awe.

"Because he's dangerous."

"He saves lives, Mr. Stark. He's one of the good guys."

"But he's powerful. What happens if he stops being a good guy? If a bad guy changes his mind or something? There's nothing stopping him from swanning in and killing all the people he says he's protecting." Sometimes the kid's naïveté is infuriating.

Peter hums, unconvinced. "But he has a secret identity. He must do that for a reason. Isn't it wrong to - to unmask him like that?" Something has him worked up; he's tapping his foot agitatedly on the floor and his shoulders are tense. Is there something Peter isn't telling him? Or perhaps it's just a matter of hero worship - he wants to protect the guy running round fighting crime outside his home.

"In my experience, secret identities are the most dangerous ones." Tony picks up the mask he made. "He's pretty fascinating, though. Do you think that web stuff comes out of him?"

"What? Ew! No!" Peter looks scandalised. "That's - that's really gross, Mr. Stark."

"Please stop calling me - "

"FRIDAY, pull up a video of Spiderman," Peter interrupts. _Teenagers._ The AI obliges. "Look," he says, pausing the video as Spiderman is mid-swing. "He makes that hand movement and then it comes out of that shooter on his wrist."

"Okay. I don't have a formula for that webbing shit, but I can make shooters. What d'you reckon's going on with his eyes? God, that suit's shitty."

"I like it," says Peter defensively, but he's eyeing the red and blue suit stood proudly on the mannequin.

"Some kind of focusing system, maybe?" Tony says, ignoring him and looking at his mask. Filtering the light through, perhaps, so he isn't dazzled. It's not a bad idea. "Ooh, watch this," he says, pressing the spider printed on the centre of the suit's chest. The tight fabric immediately loosens, so it is easy to take on and off.

"Awesome!"

"I know. I'm still your favourite superhero, right?"

Peter grins. "I don't know. Captain America _is_ pretty cool ... "

Tony playfully cuffs him upside the head. "No, he isn't. He's not even a real superhero. He's just really strong and he has a shield. Besides, you don't get to make that judgement till you've met him."

" _Can_ I meet him?"

"No. _I'm_ your favourite superhero."

"Rude," Peter huffs, then brightens and says, "Hey, FRIDAY, can I meet Captain America?"

"Of course," FRIDAY says, and Tony swears he can hear the triumph in her voice. "Would you like me to ask him to come down to the lab? He is currently in his suite on Floor - "

"No. Absolutely not," Tony says resolutely, as Peter's eyes widen. "Nope. Don't ever authorise Peter and Steve to be in the same room together."

"You're the boss."

"Hey, FRIDAY, can I meet Hawkeye?"

"No! Jeez, kid, Hawkeye? _Really?_ You think he's cooler than me? I have a flying metal suit of armour that - that shoots people!"

"He has a _bow and arrow_ , man! That's, like, infinitely cooler." He skips backwards easily when Tony tries to grab him.

"FRIDAY, Peter is not authorised to meet any of the Avengers apart from me. Ever." Tony picks up a Stark tablet and hands it to him. "Here. Draw me a picture of Iron Man and think about your sins."

Obediently, Peter opens up a drawing app for making design specs and draws a red and yellow blob with a speech bubble saying, _I'M NOT AS COOL AS HAWKEYE!_

" _Teenagers_ ," Tony mutters, turning back to his work. More trouble than they're worth.

"So, does the suit have any cool tech in it? An AI, or, like, secret guns or anything?"

"Nope. Not even a tracker. Basically, it's just a glorified scrap of Spandex. Barely even worth a hundred dollars in materials. I guess the novelty means it's worth more, though. How do you think the eyes work?"

Peter pulls up a stool and pulls some notepaper out of nowhere. The kid has an ability to find things in this mess of a lab to rival only Tony's own. "I think it could be like this," he says, and immediately starts scribbling something down in almost indecipherable handwriting without even stopping to think. This boy is _smart_. Where did he even get this idea from?

He passes the paper to Tony in triumph. " ... I think," he finishes quickly, noticing his mentor's expression. Tony just stares at him.

"What, did you redesign his suit as well or something?" he deadpans. Peter goes red and splutters something about _I was just thinking about it_ , turning away to hide his face. "Got any ideas about the web shit as well?"

"I - no," Peter says quickly. "But are you sure you need to design the whole suit? You could just ... give it to him, or something. Let him make his own adjustments. You don't need to find out his identity. What if - if you just knew him as Spiderman, or something? He could drop by, like, weekly, in his suit, and you - "

Tony narrows his eyes. "Why are you so passionate about this? Do you know him?"

It doesn't seem possible, but Peter blushes even more. "Uh - no. No."

He looks so uncomfortable that Tony almost starts laughing. "Then how do you know you can trust him?"

"I ... don't, I guess. It's really hot in here. Can I open a window?" He looks so miserable that Tony waves him on and decides to drop the subject.

He starts talking about the tensile strength of the webbing and who could have manufactured it. "OsCorp, maybe? They do a lot of work in genetic enhancements ... "

"Uh, really? Yeah. Um, I just remembered, I gotta - uh, I gotta get home early tonight ... May wants me home - to - to cook dinner."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. We're - we're all out of microwaveable mac 'n' cheese. I have to make ... pasta."

"Pasta doesn't take an hour to cook."

"Ours is ... artisan pasta. It takes longer. Bye, Mr. Stark!"

He's out the door like a shot. Tony wonders why it's so important that Peter makes dinner on time that he's so panicked when he almost forgets to. Then FRIDAY says, "Boss, you have a meeting at half past five. I would recommend leaving now in order to make a good impression. And maybe putting on a suit."

It's five o'clock. Tony had been planning to skip the first half hour of the meeting to supervise Peter, but now he's gone, and so is Tony's trail of thought about the Spiderman mask, so he shrugs and heads down to his bedroom to shower and change. Tony Stark is nothing if not unpredictable. Even on three hours of sleep with five cups of coffee in his body and only half a tuna sandwich to soak it up. _Especially_ on three hours of sleep with five cups of coffee in his body and only half a tuna sandwich to soak it up.

He showers and changes in record time, before heading down to the conference room on the twenty-third floor. Pepper is waiting for him, and she tries to hide her surprise at his appearance. "Hi," she says. "Ready?"

"No. What's this meeting about, again?"

She sighs heavily and checks her watch. "This guy wants to become our main supplier for iron and other metals. I think he thinks it would be a good advertising campaign? To supply the materials that Iron Man uses in his suits? I don't know. He seems a little ... unstable, so don't push him."

"Would I ever?"

She slaps his arm. "Yes. So don't. His prices aren't too bad. We're considering taking the deal."

A young man emerges from the elevator. "Mr. Winfield! It's wonderful to finally meet you." Pepper fixes a professional smile on her face and shakes the man's hand. _God, she's good at this,_ Tony thinks, watching her absently until she smacks his arm again.

"Hi," he says. "I'm Tony Stark."

"I know," gushes Winfield immediately, clasping his hand like it's a lifeline. Tony fights the urge to roll his eyes. "Mr. Stark, can I just say, I'm a _huge_ fan ... "

Tony glances at his wrist, notices there isn't a watch there, pretends that there is one, and says, "Wow, would you look at the time already. Looks like we only have five minutes left. What was it you wanted to sell us again?"

The man blinks, looking horrified. "Five minutes? I thought - "

"Mr. Stark, there has been a security breach in your lab on Floor 47." FRIDAY's cool voice fills the lab.

"Shit," says Tony loudly. He turns to the man in front of him. "Look, Mr. - Mr. Wing ... something ... I already have a metal supplier. It's going to have to be a hard pass. I've heard OsCorp likes low quality materials? Anyway, I have to go."

He starts running towards an elevator. "Talk to me, FRIDAY."

"Your prototype for a new Spiderman suit has been stolen," she says. "The thief entered and escaped through the window, which Mr. Parker opened because he felt too hot. I have closed it now."

"How did they get in?"

A pause. "The only plausible option is that they scaled the building, boss."

"There was no plane? Or helicopter? Glider, even?"

"Nothing. The thief climbed in through the window, took the suit, and jumped out again while I was alerting you of his presence."

"He jumped out? No parachute?"

"No."

"It had to be Spiderman."

"Are you referring to the masked vigilante who combats petty crime in Queens?"

" ... Yes? We have a whole file on him."

"I can't find any files relating to the vigilante Spiderman."

"What?" The elevator finally reaches the right floor and Tony charges out, running into the lab and looking around the lab wildly. Sure enough, the suit is gone. There is a note taped to the chest of its mannequin. _THANKS FOR THE NEW SUIT! I HOPE IT WASN'T TOO EXPENSIVE. IN EXCHANGE, I LEFT A GIFT ON THE COMPUTER. LOVE FROM SPIDERMAN ;)_

Tony runs to the window. Spiderman, the bastard, is long gone.

He moves slowly to the computer. On it is a specification, in perfect detail, for Tony's suit. Except, this time, the plans he's been working on with Peter - to absorb excess heat energy from the repulsors back into the suit to help power it - are there too, with small changes that just might make it work. He closes the tab and opens up Documents. The Spiderman file is gone. Deleted. "How did he even get onto the computer?"

"It would appear that Mr. Parker forgot to log out."

The kid left in too much of a hurry to log out. Tony can still remember how he boredly gave Peter access to edit all files, since he couldn't be bothered to choose which ones the kid was allowed to see. _Don't click on anything that looks important_ , he said. Now, he slams a hand on the table furiously, shouting in anger. "I'm an idiot!"

"Don't be too hard on yourself, boss," says FRIDAY gently. "At least thirty-six percent of the blame can be attributed to Mr. Parker."

"Don't blame him," he says sternly. "None of this is his fault. Is Spiderman out now?"

"A video of him was posted to YouTube seven minutes ago."

"What's the location?" Tony's already getting into his suit.

"I'll direct you to the coordinates."

Five minutes later, Tony is flying across Queens while FRIDAY uses satellite imaging to pinpoint a location. She speaks calmly in his ear the whole time, giving him directions and attempting to assuage Tony's furious disbelief that someone has managed to catch him completely off guard. The bastard - thinking he can just waltz up to the Tower and steal shit? "How the fuck did he even know I'd been watching him?"

"It seems that he has been watching you right back, boss." FRIDAY's voice is subdued.

 _How dare he? How fucking dare he?_

 _"_ In all fairness, you were watching him too."

"He's a vigilante. Vigilantism is a crime, which makes him a _criminal_."

"Vigilantism is not actually a crime. It's just that most of the things vigilantes do are considered illegal - namely assault. Although no legal action has been taken, many consider the Avengers a vigilante group."

"There he is."

Tony swoops down and slams into Spiderman as he swings between two buildings, wrapping metal arms around his struggling body, flies upwards, and drops him none too gently onto the hard concrete of the nearest roof, landing nearby. Spiderman coughs slightly and tries to stand up, but staggers back into a seating position on the ground, wheezing. " _Ow_."

"So, what? You thought you could just waltz in and steal my stuff?"

"Wha - Mr. - " he coughs, and suddenly lowers his voice by about an octave. "Iron Man."

"Answer my question."

"You made that suit for me. And in return, I solved a problem you've been working on. A suit for a suit."

"I made that suit to _give_ to you when I knew I could _trust_ you!"

"You _can_ trust me. I help people. This suit is just going to help me do that."

"You stop crime, huh? Well, theft is a crime. As is breaking and entering. And I'm pretty sure I could get you convicted for a whole lot more than that."

Tony lunges forwards and grabs the mask.

"Please! Don't!"

"Give me _one good reason_ why not!" Tony's shouting now. He doesn't care.

"I have a family to protect! Don't you get that? If you reveal my identity to the whole world, and there's a criminal out there who wants to manipulate me, and he takes my family, what then? I'm not like you, Mr. Stark; I don't have loads of money to spend on private security to protect them or whatever. So say one day a murderer comes to my apartment and I'm not there to stop them - what if my family gets killed? Then I'm all alone, and I don't have anyone. How am I meant to protect people if I can't even protect my own family?"

Tony pauses. "How _old_ are you? You sound like a kid."

"I'm not going to tell you how old I am," says Spiderman. His voice has dropped again.

"Why do you keep doing that thing with your voice?"

"What thing with my voice?"

"Lowering it to make yourself seem older. Never mind. Listen, I can't let you go. I gotta bring you back to the Tower. You can show me your face in private, I won't tell anyone who you are, and then we can have a very long talk about why theft is wrong."

"I'm really sorry, Mr. Stark, but I can't do that."

Something white completely obscures Tony's vision. "FRIDAY - what - "

Then a leg sweeps under his with alarming strength, knocking him flat on his back, and there are four quiet _thwip_ s, each one the sound of webbing sticking an arm or leg to the ground, rendering Tony completely immobile. " _Son of a bitch!_ " he yells, but Spiderman is long gone. He struggles uselessly against the bonds, but he can't even see anything, let alone break free of bonds stronger than steel and a hundred times more sticky.

Tony lets his head drop uselessly against the concrete and tells FRIDAY to call Rhodey.


	5. too close to the sun

**A/N:** Evening, my lovelies. Happy Friday. Have some cute h/c to fuel your weekend. Things are starting to heat up now.

Thanks as always to my beautiful reviewers: EmilyF.6, sonicxjones, LoonyLovegood1981, Wisdomsqueen, One Wing In The Fire, NotCurrent, Guest, feelzyfeelz and scc4. I love you all dearly. Thanks also to those who followed this story and added it to their favourites list.

Not much to say here, except that I don't have a beta reader and I'm terrible at proofreading, so ignore any mistakes. Have fun with a concussed Peter and a sleep deprived Tony. What could possibly go wrong?

Enjoy.

 **ICARUS**

 **5**

 **TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN**

* * *

 _He's breathing fast, but there is a tremendous weight pressing on his chest - and it hurts. Like he's been shot a thousand times through his chest, his stomach, his shoulders ... everything aches, but it's more than that; it's burning, stabbing at him, forcing him to take ragged breaths. His whole body is quivering. His chest isn't working like it should. It feels like his lungs are full of fluid - he can't get enough air - every breath rattles horrifyingly in his lungs._ That sounds like a fucking death rattle.

Holy hell. Is that a death rattle?

* * *

Peter miserably presses an ice pack to the back of his head and wishes he had never been bitten by a radioactive spider which gave him superhuman abilities and the massive responsibility of fighting of all the petty criminals in Queens. Maybe that way, he would have met Tony Stark and taken the internship with no doubts and wouldn't have had to steal a hundred-dollar suit in an attempt to make himself more efficient at saving people. Maybe he would be getting more than four or five hours of sleep at night because he wouldn't be trying to compensate for the time spent at the internship by spending even more time on the streets. Maybe he wouldn't have _Iron Man_ hunting him down and calling him a criminal. Maybe he would still have friends and family and be a normal high school student with good grades that aren't slipping by the day.

 _How the hell is he going to be able to face Mr. Stark at the internship tomorrow?_ Peter can barely meet his own eyes in the mirror, he feels so guilty - how is he supposed to meet his mentor's, with a concussion still going in full force from when the man dropped him onto a concrete roof? _Justifiably_ , he might add - Tony was well within his rights to go after Peter, when he had broken into his building, stolen his suit, and deleted a file from his personal computer that outlined everything he knew about Spiderman's identity. Peter is in full support of Tony's actions.

It's his _own_ actions that plague him. Is he any better than the criminals he fights? How can he face them and act like he's better when them when he's just as criminal as they are?

Can he even go out as Spiderman any more? The more he goes out, the more danger he's in - the more he gives Mr. Stark to track him down. And if he finds out Peter's secret ... well, that can't happen. Ever.

He's hidden both suits deep inside his closet, hoping that having them hidden will reassure him. It doesn't.

Collapsing into bed with an unchecked concussion is probably a very bad idea, but his ribs are really sore and he's so exhausted he can't even remember if he's done his homework yet.

"Peter, you're going to be late for school!" May shouts from outside his door.

"Nnnnnggghh," he says. "What? I just got into bed."

"Peter, you've been asleep since before I got back at half six last night. You didn't wake up once."

"I ... I think I'm sick."

His door creaks open and light comes pouring in. He hisses and shields his eyes against it, nausea twisting his gut. His head aches relentlessly. His ribs hurt too much to breathe normally, and his breaths are coming short and shallow.

"Oh, Peter, honey." A cool hand presses against his forehead. "You do feel kind of warm."

His enhanced metabolism gives him a higher body temperature than average. It's kind of a blessing at times like this.

"I'll call the school. Do you need me to stay home with you?"

"No - no." He waves a hand in her general direction. "I'll be fine."

"I'll get you some Aspirin before I go. Try and get some sleep, okay?"

 _Don't take Aspirin with a concussion._ That's what all the Internet pages have told him. "'Mmkay."

"I'll be home this evening. Call me if you feel worse, okay?"

"Yeah."

"I love you."

She's gone before he can reply. He shuts his eyes, groans, and rolls over, groaning again as the weight shift puts more pressure on his aching rib cage. _This is all your own fault_ , he tells himself sternly. _You wouldn't be in this situation if you'd have taken a night off going on patrol._ Then, against all odds, he manages to fall asleep again.

Suddenly there is a shrill, blaring noise pounding through his skull. Peter shuts his eyes tightly and clamps his hands over his ears so tightly that he rolls out of bed. Winded, he sucks in a deep breath, only to feel his still-bruised ribs scream at the motion. As he tries to breathe, he finds the source of the noise right next to his head, and slams his hand down on it.

It stops, and then there is beautiful, peaceful silence.

" ... Peter?" Tony's voice rings tinnily through the phone speaker, too quiet for normal people to make out, but at a perfect volume for a concussed Peter.

He looks at the date and time. It's Thursday. He should be at the Tower. _Shit_. "Oh - uh - hey, Mr. Stark."

" ... Hi ... You okay? Where are you?"

"Sorry. I completely forgot to call you. I'm ... sick. I'm really sorry."

"Is your aunt there?"

"No. She's working," Peter says, wondering where this is going.

"Are you infectious? I really need to talk to you in person. Can I come over?"

"What? Um, sure."

"Cool. See you in five."

" _Five?_ " Peter says incredulously, but the line is already dead. He sighs, picks himself up off the floor, and in a fog stumbles into the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. Catching sight of himself in the mirror, he winces at his reflection: exhausted eyes look hollowly back at him, rimmed with dark shadows and bags underneath. His face is pale and yellowish. When was the last time he had as much sleep as this? He should feel rejuvenated, not groggy. And why hasn't he healed yet? Upon lifting his shirt, he examines the bruising across his torso; it's mostly faded, and it's certainly less tender. All he has to do is not breathe too deeply, without giving Mr. Stark any indication that it was Peter he interrogated last night. Peter moves into the bathroom and manages to brush his teeth without incident.

He's attempting to comb his hair when Tony knocks on the door. "Open up," he calls. "Your oddly inquisitive neighbours are staring at me again."

Peter manages to make it to the door without falling flat on his face, which is something of an achievement in these circumstances. "I think they would stop staring if you stopped shouting about them," he says a little breathlessly, opening the door and leaning against it heavily to take the weight off his legs. He forgets that doors are not fixed objects, and it swings lazily forward until it bumps against an expensive custom-made Italian shoe. "Oh. Sorry."

Tony frowns at him with an odd mixture of amusement and concern. "Maybe you should sit down. Come on."

"M'fine."

But Tony takes him by the arm and leads him towards the couch, onto which Peter collapses bonelessly, too tired to stay standing. The light is making his head throb even more painfully, and he feels a little dizzy - not to mention nauseous. Nope, this is definitely not a good time to be having a serious conversation with his boss. In his own home.

"Why are you here, again?" he asks fuzzily - he can't quite remember the reason for the surprise visit.

"I have to talk to you, Peter. I'd be stupid not to."

"Um ... okay."

"After you left last night, there was a break in."

"Oh no. Really?" Peter flops his head back against the cushions. He doesn't even sound convincing to himself.

Tony, however, doesn't seem to notice. "It was Spiderman."

"Cool," he says unenthusiastically, because that's how he's supposed to react when someone mentions Spiderman. Like he admires him from afar, but doesn't really have any idea who he's talking about.

"Hey. _Hey._ " Fingers snap in front of his closing eyes. "Stay awake. It's rude to fall asleep when you have company. And no - that is not cool. Spiderman broke into my Tower and stole the new suit I was working on."

"That's ... not good ... can I go back to bed now? I gotta ... " Peter lists sideways, straight towards Tony, who catches him by the arm and props him back up against the couch, but again, the movement jostles his bruised ribs, and he makes a pained noise.

"Whoa. Are you - is that blood?"

Peter stands up and looks at the dark smidge where his head was, a minute before. " ... No," he says, not at all convincingly.

"Peter. Peter. Hey, look at me." A hand takes his chin and raises his head so that he's looking into Mr. Stark's eyes. "Are you _concussed_? What happened?"

"I fell down some stairs," he mumbles. Has he used that one before? He can't really remember.

"And hit the back of your head? Come on, kid. I'm older than you. I'm not senile."

"I fell backwards."

"Does your aunt know?"

Peter recoils from his touch. "You can't tell her. Please don't."

"Who did this to you, Peter?" His voice is very soft. Gentle. Kind, even, which isn't something that Peter would ever particularly associate with his voice. Not that he isn't a kind person - of course he is - but his voice is generally cool, calculating. A little sarcastic most of the time. Peter can't meet his eyes. What's he supposed to say? _It was you, Mr. Stark. You dropped me from nearly ten feet in the air onto my back. Oh, and by the way, I'm Spiderman. Sorry I stole your suit. Can I keep the internship?_

"No one. I fell down the stairs."

"Then why can't I tell her? Shouldn't she know, so she can keep an eye on you?"

"If you tell her, she'll freak out. And when she freaks out, I freak out, and ... well, all I need to do is sleep it off. I heal fast. I'll see you tomorrow."

"If you think I'm leaving you alone with a head injury, you're very much mistaken. How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Two," says Peter, whose vision (for whatever reason) always seems to remain unaffected by concussions.

"Oh. Okay. That sounded pretty easy."

"Mr. Stark, I'm fine. Please stop wasting your time."

"I'm going to text your aunt. Do you need me to stay until she gets here?"

Sensing that there's no point in arguing, Peter waves him off. "I'm fine. I'm going back to bed."

A firm hand grips his arm and starts to lead him towards his bedroom door. "Which one's your room? I don't want you swooning all over the floor like some damsel in distress."

"This one." Peter pushes open his door and is enveloped by the warm, loving embrace of the darkness inside. The furious pulsing at his temples is reduced slightly.

"Look, before I go - I have to ask you, Peter ... Spiderman got in through the window that you left open - and your account was left open on the computer, which he used to delete the file on himself. This probably sounds stupid, but - did you have anything to do with the break-in?"

 _Act innocent act innocent meet his eyes be apologetic act innocent meet his eyes don't freak out -_

Peter drags his gaze up to eye level. "Holy crap, it's _my_ fault he got in? Oh God - I'm such an idiot - Mr. Stark, I'm _so sorry_ \- can I do anything to make it up to you? I'm _so_ sorry ... I didn't know ... "

A hand claps down on his shoulder. "It's okay, kiddo. It's not your fault. Rhodey just made me promise to check. But clearly you're not lying to me. You're a terrible liar. Go to bed."

Peter climbs into his bed and lies down with a sort of horrified amusement. _If only he knew_. "Mr. Stark? I'm really sorry." He isn't just apologising for leaving the window open. He's apologising for all of it: hiding the truth from him, deleting all his Spiderman information, refusing to tell him his identity last night, pretending he's on his side, webbing him up and leaving him on a rooftop for anyone to find, lying about his concussion, worrying him unnecessarily ... It all counts. Every part of it makes him an even more terrible person. All Tony's concern ... it makes Peter feel a bit sick, knowing that he's lying through his teeth to the very same man who's looking after him while he's injured. And that he can never stop lying to him.

"It's okay, kid." But it isn't. _If only he knew_.

Peter swears he feels someone pull a blanket up around his shoulders before the door clicks shut. Tony doesn't deserve this.

 _If only he knew._

* * *

Since when did he become so soft-hearted? Tony can't help but wonder what life has done to him to make him feel so _paternal_ towards his slightly injured intern. He types out a quick message to May Parker, letting her know what's wrong with Peter and that he probably shouldn't be alone for the next twenty-four hours or so. Exactly six seconds after he presses _send_ , she calls him. "Is he okay?" she asks immediately. "Is he badly hurt? Still bleeding? Oh my God, does he need a hospital?"

"He's okay," Tony says quickly. "Just sleeping it off. He didn't want to worry you."

"Mr. Stark? Why were you at my apartment?"

"I got worried when he didn't turn up for the internship, so I called him. He didn't sound too good over the phone, and I was in the neighbourhood, so I dropped in to check up on him." He replies smoothly, without hesitation. May doesn't need to know that he also dropped in to quiz her son about whether he purposefully allowed a vigilante to break into his workplace and steal a suit, as well as delete information. Though that was mainly Rhodey's idea - he insisted to Tony was being too stubborn about Peter, and _doesn't it seem a_ little _convenient that Spiderman knew exactly when and where to break in?_ Tony maintains that anyone could have seen the open window, and that the computer was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but with Pepper in full agreement with Rhodey, he didn't have much choice but to talk to Peter. When Peter didn't show up, Rhodey fixed him with a triumphant look until Tony called. The rest is history.

But Rhodey and Pepper haven't spent three months getting to know the kid - they don't understand that Peter is so inherently _good_ , so innocent, so well-behaved, that he would never in a hundred years even _think_ about doing something like this, let alone lie about it afterwards. Peter tried to lie to him once before, and Tony was able to see through it instantaneously. Which wasn't difficult.

Again, Tony is brought back to the mystery of how Peter got his concussion, and hurt his ribs at the same time, from the looks of things. The raw fear in May's voice when she called makes him feel sure it isn't her. Could it be a high school bully? But why would they assault him on his way home from school? That doesn't make any sense. How would they know where he was? What would they have against him - the internship? But Peter told Tony that most people at school don't even believe the internship is real. (When Tony offered to come and pick him up from school one day, just to show them, Peter looked so alarmed that Tony started organising a field trip to the Tower with Midtown School for some of the classes. Peter doesn't know yet, and Tony fully intends to make it the most embarrassing field trip he's ever been on. In the nicest way possible, of course.)

He didn't want to alarm Peter with the suit, so he packed it into a briefcase before coming in, but once he's out of the door Tony immediately gets into the metal armour again and flies off. He doesn't have time to be driven around today.

Back at the Tower, his thoughts are getting too much for him, so he turns up his music to full volume and tinkers with a robotic hamster that he's been working on for no real reason ("It's a pet that requires no care and can't die!" he said, advertising it to Peter, who replied, "I think you just described a soft toy, Mr. Stark."). The easy, mechanical motions come to him without difficulty and he enjoys the feeling of the music blasting through his brain, so loud that any other thought is completely obliterated.

It is a not at all unhealthy coping mechanism and Tony swears by it.

What feels like minutes but is probably hours pass before the music shuts off abruptly. " _Tony_ ," Pepper says firmly. "Come to bed. It's four in the morning and I can't sleep because the walks are vibrating. You need sleep."

 _Four in the morning?_ The robotic hamster isn't very complicated; it should have been done hours ago. He looks down. In his hands is a small metal bird. "Huh," he says. "Look."

He flips a switch and the bird flies over to land gracefully on her shoulder. "That's lovely, Tony," Pepper says tiredly. "Now you can come to bed."

She turns to leave and Tony follows her reluctantly, not in the mood to argue. His ears are still ringing a little from the loud music, and the chorus of the song is still stuck in his head, bass pounding violently at his temples. Jeez.

Pepper's talking about that Winfield guy from yesterday. " ... rescheduled the meeting that you had to cut short yesterday, but I'm busy, so you'll either have to find someone else to take or do it on your own. It's at five tomorrow evening. _Please_ try and be polite. He was pretty angry yesterday."

"So was I," Tony mutters.

"Yes, well, yesterday you had a good excuse. But tomorrow, you won't. So if you don't want to get materials for a lower price - "

"I don't."

" - then be civil and explain to him that you don't think you can accept at this point in time. And buy him some chocolates or something to say sorry."

"How about a robotic hamster?"

"A box of chocolates, Tony."

They get into bed without further incident and Tony manages to fall asleep fairly easily, which is a first. He doesn't even have nightmares - instead, he has an oddly surreal dream about a cuttlefish that looks a lot like a shark. His teacher is telling him that it is most definitely a cuttlefish, but Tony's trying to persuade her that it isn't - "Look, it has shark teeth!" - and then he gets into the pool they're looking at and the shark bites his hand off. Except it's a cuttlefish, and there's no blood.

He wakes up at nine a.m. in a cold sweat. _That was weird_.

Then he takes a shower, makes some unhealthily strong coffee, eats a gluten-free waffle (why the hell not?) and wonders down into his lab. Something was bugging him as he fell asleep last night - something he can't quite remember ...

Peter. Why did he have a concussion? It's obvious he didn't fall down the stairs - falling over has been his excuse for every single bruise Tony has dared ask about, and yet Tony has never once seen evidence towards this alleged clumsiness. Quite the opposite, actually; Peter moves gracefully. He sees obstacles in front of him. He moves out of the way of things he could walk into. Surely someone who falls over that much would trip at least once in the chaos of Tony's lab?

"FRIDAY," he says.

"Yes, boss?"

"If, theoretically," Tony begins, then pauses to recollect his thoughts. "There was a kid who kept coming in with bruises and lying about where he got them, would it be right to investigate?"

"The Internet suggests that the best course of action would be to notify the theoretical child's school, so that further investigation can be done."

"Well, that's stupid. Would it be morally acceptable to conduct a personal investigation? With a drone or something?"

"I think that legally, that would be considered stalking."

"Hmm. But for a justifiable cause?"

"Even then."

"Okay. Never mind. I'm just looking out for him. Can you piece together video footage of Peter going from the Tower to his house? Using security footage, YouTube, anything you can."

"Certainly, boss."

"And send May Parker a text message asking how Peter is this morning."

"Done."

Tony sets about following the specs that Spiderman left for him to start making adjustments to his suit. He's pissed beyond belief, but he's not just going to ignore the idea now that someone he hates has helped with it. That would be counter-productive. Besides, Peter was the one who came up with the idea in the first place. He deserves most of the credit, not Spiderman, whoever the hell he is. Of _course_ the little shit is also a technological genius, as well as having numerous genetic enhancements that make him fast, strong, and an asshole.

May responds to his text about an hour later, saying that Peter is feeling better and is back at school today, against her better judgement - and that he hopes to be coming to the internship later as well. Maybe the kid really does heal fast. He vaguely remembers something about today being the last day before spring break, so at least he'll have some time to recover.

Tony goes out for lunch and wonders idly whether Peter would like to go and meet Winfield with him.


	6. feel it in your chest

**A/N:** This is it. The big one. The one I keep hinting at in the extracts at the start of the chapters.

Bear in mind that half of it is from a very concussed Tony's point of view, so it might not make much sense. Stuff will be cleared up in the next chapter, I promise.

Thanks as always to my beautiful reviewers: Waterfall-Orchid, EmilyF.6, feelzyfeels, One Wing In The Fire, and cryalforn. Reviews are my life force. Thanks also to all the followers and favourites - I can't believe this story has managed to hit 100 followers before the sixth chapter. I love you all dearly.

Enjoy.

 **ICARUS**

 **6**

 **FEEL IT IN YOUR CHEST**

* * *

 _He sighs heavily. "See, it's like this, Pete. When someone close to you dies, it - well, it hurts more than anything, right? God, you probably know that more than anyone. But when they die because of you - that's - that's something else entirely. When they die because of their association with you, and if they didn't know you then they wouldn't have died ... that's_ hell _. Whether or not you meant to let them die, whether or not you wanted them to - that's their blood on your hands, like it or not._

 _"And then there's when they die to save you. You know what that feels like, Pete? It feels like there are a thousand knives stabbing at your gut the_ whole fucking time _, because no matter who you are, you never feel worthy. You never feel like they should have been given the right to make that decision - that their life is worth less than yours - because the very fact that they made it makes them better. A hundred times better. A_ million _times better. And then you have to spend the rest of your fucking life trying to make yourself seem better, to stop their sacrifice from being completely in vain, but you can't. No matter how hard you try, it will never be enough. You ever felt that, kid?"_

* * *

"So, kid, how would you like to go to a meeting with me?"

Peter turns to look at him. He's all hyped up because school's finished for spring break and now he has two weeks of freedom ahead of him. There are no signs of concussion in sight - or maybe he's just good at hiding them. "What kind of meeting?"

"A meeting where I try to explain to a very angry guy that I do not want him to become my primary supplier of iron, without saying anything that will further piss him or Pepper off."

"Oh. Do I get a choice in the matter?"

"Absolutely not. Come on."

A message from Winfield arrived earlier telling them that for security reasons, they have to park in the staff parking lot and wait there for a chaperone to escort them into the actual facility. It is undoubtable that this is not a security measure but a way to inconvenience Tony as much as possible. He kind of respects that, if he's being completely honest with himself, however much he dislikes the man.

It's Happy's day off, so Tony drives them himself in a brand new Audi he's been waiting to try out. Peter is awestruck: it's clear that he's never even seen the inside of a car as expensive as this, let alone been driven in one. He rambles for a solid five minutes about how nice it is - the smell, the upholstery, the design, the stereo, the noise of the engines ... Tony enjoys listening to it in spite of himself. Peter's genuine _innocence_ is a lot of fun to listen too, no matter how long it goes for.

They draw to a smooth halt in the car park. It's a multi-storey block, but they find a space marked for visitors on the ground floor. They get out, Peter still chattering excitedly (Tony isn't quite sure how they got onto the subject of the best sandwich fillings, but he's happy to roll with it) and are standing and waiting for their chaperone when Tony receives a notification on his screen. He taps on it and opens a video.

"Hey, kid, go and watch for them while I look at this," he says, and Peter does as he asks, walking over to the entrance to wait. Tony plays the video in silence, because the kid is only thirty feet away, if that, and he doesn't want to have to go through any awkward conversations about what he's watching.

FRIDAY has pulled through. On the screen is a small, blurry Peter Parker walking away from the Tower, as shown on various security cameras. The footage is sped up, for which he is thankful, until a few minutes later, at which point Peter ducks into a small back alley, out of sight.

 _What in God's name is he doing in there?_

For about a minute, the camera continues to watch the alley. Clearly there are no cameras beyond this one. Then, it is not Peter who emerges but a red and blue blur -

 _No. Dear God no._

\- The video skips forward a few hours before the blur returns, moving slower this time, and then, five minutes later, Peter Parker emerges, looking a lot worse for wear.

Tony pauses the video with shaking fingers, Peter's pinched face frozen on the screen. Not him. _Not Peter_. Because this _kid_ \- this sweet, innocent, fifteen-year-old _kid -_ cannot be the masked man who has been pissing Tony off for months. The guy who broke into Tony's personal lab and stole something. Who hacked his computers and deleted files. _Peter_ , who's too shy and awkward to even refer to Tony by his first name. How can _he_ be a vigilante?

But even as he tries to deny it, things are falling into place like pieces of a puzzle. The bruising. The tiredness. The panic about being late. The original reluctance to accept the internship. Hell, even the sensitivity to loud noise - _it all makes sense._

Damn that kid. Damn that _fucking kid_ for working his way into Tony's heart, for getting under his skin so he can use his technology and stop him from getting too close to the truth, for blinding him to Spiderman's true identity - because now he knows, it's obvious. It's so obvious that Tony would laugh if he wasn't so close to passing out. As it is, he stumbles back against the side of his car, looks at his angrily beeping watch and reads with detached interest its glowing message to _BREATHE._

It feels as if he is underwater. His blood is roaring in his ears; his vision keeps slipping in and out of focus. His heart hammers wildly in his chest.

 _Panic attack_.

Tony looks at his watch again as little black spots dance across his vision. _BREATHE. BREATHE. BREATHE._

Looking at his watch is a habit, picked up from all the other issues he has. Rhodey helped him get into it. _When you're panicking, just look at your watch._

Peter can't have - can't be - _can't_ be Spiderman. _He can't betray me too._

 _BREATHE. BREATHE. BREATHE._

Tony tries to remember how it feels to draw air into his lungs. His mouth is open, but he's gasping uselessly -

He finally musters the strength to look up at Peter, to see for himself if there is any possibility that another of the only people Tony has ever let in has betrayed him, but what he sees isn't what he expected at all.

Peter is charging towards him, faster than Tony thought possible, panic written over every one of his traitorous features.

Tony doesn't even have time to flinch away before Peter has _seized_ him, hands grabbing at his sides, pulling, then pushing ...

And Tony finds himself flying backwards, shocked into silence by the sheer knowledge that Peter just _threw_ him -

And then his world explodes into horrifying fragments of sound and light and pain and colour and smoke, and he slams into concrete just outside the entrance to the car park, staring up at an oddly black sky, and, for an indeterminate period of time, Tony Stark registers absolutely nothing at all.

* * *

He doesn't know how long he lies there. Seconds, minutes, hours, maybe, but when he blearily cracks open his stinging eyes and coughs out a lungful of smoke, nobody is there to help him. He heaves himself into a sitting feeling, ignoring the dizzying swoop of nausea and lightheadedness, and squints in a futile attempt to see through all the smoke and dust.

Nothing.

He coughs again and tries to suck in some clean air, but it burns and makes him cough more and isn't very clean at all.

He half expects to see someone running towards him at any moment, taking him to an ambulance, giving him an oxygen mask, taking him to a hospital, but there is absolute silence.

Not silence. His ears are ringing so loudly that he can't hear. He tries to shout but can't hear his own voice. _Help_ , he tries to say, _I need help_. But no sound leaves his mouth. Or maybe it does.

There's something else. He loses his balance without warning and falls onto his back. Turns his head. There's a phone.

Look at your watch. _BREATHE BREATHE BREATHE BREATHEBREATHEBREATHE_ -

Panic button. On his watch. His fingers aren't working like they should but after a few tries he manages to press it. _Say something_. He programmed it to take a voice message. _Need medevac,_ he tries to say. _Helen Cho_.

Why does he need Helen Cho? He can have someone else fix him up. He doesn't need a specialist.

There's a phone next to his head.

Look at your watch. _BREATHE BREATHE_ _Peter._ Where's Peter?

He lurches up again. Staggers to his feet this time. Doubles over and vomits. Blinding pain through his skull. Hurts. _Peter_.

Half-crawling through rubble. There's a hand.

Look at your watch. _BREATHE BREATHE BREATHE._ The screen is cracked and frozen. He tries to breathe. Then he lifts up a piece of concrete and drops it to the side. There's Peter. His legs are pinned but his upper body is free.

Something's wrong. He looks at his watch. _BREATHE_. The air is full of smoke and it hurts his chest. He coughs. It hurts.

Something's wrong. Peter.

He drops to his knees. _Peter_ , he says. The boy looks up at him with wide eyes. Chest moving rapidly. Gasping for air. Reaching out to him. Something red trickling from the corner of his mouth.

Bad. He looks at his watch. _BREATHEBREATHEBREATHEBREATHEBREATHE._

Words on the boy's lips. _M'ssss'r S'rrk._ Mr. Stark.

 _God._

Blood on his hands. A lot of blood. Is it his?

Not his.

 _Peter_.

Blood coming from somewhere. Not just his mouth. _Where?_

He looks for a gaping wound, a hole somewhere. Nothing.

Wait -

He sits and observes the shuddering two-foot long piece of metal sticking out of the boy's chest. Is that meant to be there? Maybe it's like the arc reactor, ha, ha. But there's blood. Lots of blood.

Pressure.

He pulls off his filthy suit jacket and wraps it around the metal. Hurts. His head hurts.

There's his watch. _BREATHE._

 _BREATHE._

 _BREATHE._

Peter is trying to fight him. Pushing weakly at Tony's hands. _Stop, it hurts_. Can't stop. Trying to help. Where's the medevac? How long has he been here?

Eyelashes fluttering. Stay awake. The ringing has subsided just enough for him to hear his own voice. "Come on, Peter. Stay awake." Throat is raw.

Hands shaking. He's scared. Look at your watch. _BREATHE_.

"You gotta breathe for me, buddy."

Peter's whole body judders with the effort. Tony barks a hysterical, humourless laugh.

"You can't leave me now, Spiderman."

Eyes widen. Opening mouth to say something. A sort of wet gurgle instead of words. Lips coated with red.

He smoothes the boy's sweaty hair off his alarmingly pale forehead, wipes the blood from his cheek, says his name again.

Tears in his eyes. When did he last cry?

Slowly, inevitably, eyes slide shut. _No._ Wake up. Wake up! "Peter. _Peter!_ "

Nothing. He presses harder on the bundled jacket.

Nothing.

 _BREATHE. BREATHE. BREATHE._

Hands grabbing at his arms. No. Peter needs him. _No!_ But his body is numb. Limbs don't work.

Pulling him away from Peter. "Tony? Tony?" That's Rhodey's voice.

Suddenly too weak to hold himself up any longer. Falling back into several pairs of arms, staring at a sky full of dust and smoke and thousands of tiny agonies, stinging his skin and burning his soul. Perhaps if he sleeps, the balance of the universe will be restored; spring will turn to summer, and summer to fall; the sky will clear; Tony Stark will return to his former self, sharp and funny and without having to worry about stupid interns who sacrifice their own lives to save his. Perhaps this nightmarish day will turn into evening, and when the sun rises, full of hopeless optimism, it will light a clear sky that doesn't burn the lungs of the people living under it, a sky that isn't full of tiny particulates that choke people to death, a sky that lets people survive the useless slot of time in which they have to live.

Perhaps today is an aberration, an anomaly that is ultimately disregarded from the final results, a difference in measurements so insignificant that upon review it is instantly ignored. Perhaps tomorrow Tony Stark will wake up in his own bed as if today never happened, think nothing of it, and move on.

But right now, as he finally succumbs to the exhaustion, as he finally allows his eyes to roll back into his head and lets the frantic voices calling his name fade to nothing, the wounds feel excruciatingly raw. All he knows is that the hard shell Tony Stark built for himself, the shield against anything that could possibly hurt him, the Iron Man armour that he kept around his soul until Peter Parker walked into his life, is gone.

And there is nothing in its place.


	7. acting out all their fears

**A/N:** Hello, all. Apologies for the late update. The week before last, I had what can only be described as an absolute motherfucker of a day, if you'll excuse the language. Last week, I had a big family party. Fun times.

Anyway, here's the long-awaited Chapter Seven. Sorry to have left you on such a brutal cliffhanger, and sorry for the angst that is to come. I'm trying my best here.

Many thanks to my lovely reviewers: Ashburk712, LoonyLovegood1981, One Wing In The Fire, EmilyF.6, Guest, hhh, and DaWriter06. You guys are my life.

I have a bunch of exams coming up, so the next update may not be for a while, but I'll see how it all goes. See you then.

Enjoy.

 **ICARUS**

 **7**

 **ACTING OUT ALL THEIR FEARS**

The first time Peter wakes up, he's moving. Fast. The lurching motion is sickening. He opens his eyes and is immediately assaulted by blinding, white artificial lights, moving past his panicked, blurry field of vision. Something is pressing down on his skin, around his nose and mouth, on his cheeks. People are shouting. He lifts his arm and tugs at the Thing on his face. Someone tears his hand away and he cries out.

He's breathing fast, but there is a tremendous weight pressing on his chest - and it _hurts_. Like he's been shot a thousand times through his chest, his stomach, his shoulders ... everything aches, but it's more than that; it's burning, stabbing at him, forcing him to take shallow, ragged breaths. His whole body is quivering. His chest isn't working like it should. It feels like his lungs are full of fluid - he can't get enough air - every breath rattles horrifyingly in his lungs. _That sounds like a fucking death rattle._

 _Holy hell. Is that a death rattle?_

Peter tries to focus and think about how he got here. He remembers the tingling at the base of his neck, the way his hairs stood on end, the way his senses screamed _DANGER, DANGER, DANGER._ Running towards Tony, panicked, catching a glimpse of a horror-stricken face - did he know about the danger too? Hurling his mentor through the air, and damning the consequences, because that was the only way Tony was ever going to make it out of this alive. Not knowing what the hell was about to happen, but that it was going to be _bad_.

Then there's a strange blank spot in his memory. The next thing he remembers is looking up at a white face tinged with grey, lips repeating his name over and over. Pressing down, agonisingly, on his chest. He tried to breathe but could barely make his lungs expand. There were snippets of sentences - _you gotta breathe for me, buddy -_ but after that ... nothing. Until now.

He lifts his head to look at the piece of metal sticking out of him, but a firm hand is placed on his forehead and it pushes until he's lying flat again.

The fiery pain is so intense that he wants to scream. His heart is pounding and as his bed, or whatever it is, jolts, he cries out in pain and fear and confusion. He can hear himself gasping, gurgling, hear his frenzied heart beat the blood out of his body. Everything he can taste and smell is metallic, bitter. Blood.

"What the fuck? Why isn't he under?"

"He's enhanced. Just give him more!"

A hand slips into his. "Peter, I need you to try and stay calm. Fall asleep if you can. You've got to stop fighting us, okay? We're trying to help you."

"He's already on twice the normal adult dose! Any more could kill him!"

"If he stays awake for much longer, he's going to die anyway! Just give him some more!"

He tries to move away and the resulting agony is so white-hot and intense that his vision whites out for a second. As he comes back to himself, he dimly registers that someone is screaming. _That can't be good_. He tries to sit up and save them, but hands are already forcing him down, wrapping restraints around him.

" _Peter!_ " someone is shouting. "You have to relax! You're breaking her hand!"

He feels the unmistakable crunch of bone beneath his hand and realises that it is the doctor beside him who is screaming. The feeling of metal in his chest has his back arched, all his muscles tensed.

There is a sharp prick in his arm. Something that isn't oxygen is coming through his mask. Something else slides into his neck, but the sting feels like nothing compared to everything else.

 _Fight it. You have to fight._

He bucks against the restraints wildly, tring his best to ignore the sobs coming from the floor beside him. But the drugs filling his system are too much even for Spiderman, and he finds himself slipping away and weakening until he is no longer able to.

Peter spirals into an infinite void full of nothing.

* * *

The second time he wakes up, he is a little more lucid, though he isn't entirely sure if he really is awake at all. Perhaps it's just a dream. He understands where he is, but doesn't bother trying to open his eyes. He can feel the drip in the back of his hand, the thin hospital blanket, the large plastic tube that has invaded his mouth and goes into his throat and makes him want to gag. In the background, a heart monitor beeps calmly. Peter listens to it and lets it ground him for a while. There is a hand in his again, which is probably a mistake, given what happened last time.

He doesn't hurt so much any more, though his whole body aches. His limbs are heavy and he's too exhausted to even try to move. The tube in his mouth seems to be forcing air into his lungs, which is equal parts concerning and relieving. Should he even be conscious?

 _Focus on the hand. That seems important._ It's warm and calloused. Large, strong - feels male, but who is he to make assumptions?

When he hears a voice, he is almost certain he is dreaming. The voice is familiar - it's Tony's voice. It keeps cracking and is hoarse and all in all sounds deeply unhealthy, but at least it means that he is alive, and not confined to a bed, and able to speak.

"Look, kid. I don't want to get sentimental here. But ... try and fight this, okay? I need you to not die. Your Aunt May needs you to not die." A shaky laugh. "I told her you were on a two-week tour of all the Stark Industries labs. I've been texting her from your phone. She keeps asking you to call her. You really want to do that to me, kid? You want to make me look her in the eye and tell her that her nephew isn't coming home because he died saving me?"

He sighs heavily. "See, it's like this, Pete. When someone close to you dies, it - well, it hurts more than anything, right? God, you probably know that more than anyone. But when they die because of you - that's - that's something else entirely. When they die because of their association with you, and if they didn't know you then they wouldn't have died ... that's _hell_. Whether or not you meant to let them die, whether or not you wanted them to - that's their blood on your hands, like it or not.

"And then there's when they die to save you. You know what that feels like, Pete? It feels like there are a thousand knives stabbing at your gut the _whole fucking time_ , because no matter who you are, you never feel worthy. You never feel like they should have been given the right to make that decision - that their life is worth less than yours - because the very fact that they made it makes them better. A hundred times better. A _million_ times better. And then you have to spend the rest of your fucking life trying to make yourself seem better, to stop their sacrifice from being completely in vain, but you can't. No matter how hard you try, it will never be enough. You ever felt that, kid?

"Shit." Another hollow laugh. "I didn't mean to get angry. It's not like you can hear me anyway. Look, what I'm trying to say is _don't die_. You don't get to make that call. Not yet. People still need you Peter - _I_ need you. I need you to come and talk incessantly in my lab when I'm trying to work, to make weird references to pop culture that no one under the age of twenty understands, to wear your crappy t-shirts with dumb science puns on them. God knows your aunt needs you. And the people of New York? I feel like they need you too, Spiderman. So don't fucking die, okay?"

He sounds utterly defeated, his voice quiet and hollow and somehow _dead_. Peter wants to open his eyes, to reassure him that he heard him, that things will be okay, but he can't. He can't even squeeze the trembling hand in his.

Instead, with immense effort, he manages to twitch a finger. There is a sniff, then silence. " ... Peter?"

But even this simple movement is too much and Peter slips backwards, away into the dark reassurance of dreamless sleep.

* * *

The third time he wakes up, he's ill. He knows this because he's sweating but also freezing, and his whole body aches, and he's too restless to keep still, but at the same time he is shaking and so exhausted he could sleep for a month.

He is breathing fast - the tube in his mouth is gone - and someone's trying to talk to him. He can barely hear what they're saying.

Peter writhes and twists on the narrow bed, trying to find some comfort in the hot, damp sheets. "He's going to rip out his IV!"

"Someone sedate him, _now_."

"Do you not remember the surgery?"

"Give him the stuff Banner designed for Steve Rogers."

"Are you kidding? That could kill him!"

"Just do it!" He recognises that voice. It's someone he knows, isn't it? "Peter, buddy, listen to me. Your fever's way too high. We need to bring it down, so you gotta trust us, okay? Just try and stay still for a minute."

Peter whimpers. It hurts. Too much. He has to get some fresh air.

He rolls sideways, trying to get out of bed. Several things happen at once. The skin on the back of his hand tears; something, horrifyingly, starts to be pulled out of his nose; things that were stuck to his skin rip off; everyone starts shouting.

" _Shit!_ " yells a male voice.

He opens his eyes. His father is standing right beside him, trying to heave him back into position. "Dad?" he says wildly, blinking up at him through watery eyes. Hope swells in his chest. He feels like he could sing with joy. Is his dad still alive? _Where did he go?_ _What's he doing here?_ "Dad?"

"I'm not your dad, kid," says Richard Parker. "He's ... not around any more, remember? It's me. Tony. Mr. Stark. Whatever the hell you want."

"Dad, it - it really hurts."

"I'm not - "

" _He's hallucinating, God damn it!_ "

"Please," he persists, desperate now, needing someone to understand. "You gotta help me - I'm sick - it really hurts."

Someone squeezes his hands and lets out a huff of air. "I know, kid," Richard says softly. "I know it hurts."

There is a sharp sting in Peter's neck. He groans, but suddenly his limbs are too heavy to move.

 _Time to go_ , says a little voice in the back of his head, and he sees no reason to argue.

* * *

Peter blinks awake hazily. This time, he's okay. He feels fine. A little tired, perhaps, but fine. It's like the moment in movies when the character wakes up and knows, this time, that they're in the clear, that there will be no more hallucinations or fevers or surgeries or falling asleep halfway through words.

He looks around him. He's in a hospital room, fairly small, but private - white walls, pale blue linoleum floor, large windows overlooking the city. His legs are covered with a thin blue blanket. He appears to be wearing a hospital gown, which is every bit as unpleasant as films and books have led him to believe. Underneath this, he can feel a large dressing on his chest, and bandages wrapped around his torso. A tube is in his nose again. There's a heart rate monitor on his finger, and a drip connected to his hand. He doesn't remove it, because he's not a total idiot.

Across the room, Tony Stark is asleep in a chair. He looks pretty rough. Peter is trying to decide whether or not to wake him when the other man suddenly opens his eyes and straightens with a start, and then immediately looks straight at him.

"Peter?" he breathes. "You with me?"

"Yeah," Peter says, a little disturbed at how hoarse his voice sounds.

Tony stands up and walks four feet across the room to stand beside his bed. He looks even worse up close: he's unshaven, his hair is in disarray, and his suit is crumpled and looks as if it hasn't been changed in days. There are bags under his eyes, and butterfly bandages across a small cut on his forehead. He's scanning Peter's face, as if to check that he really is okay like he says. Then he moves over to the heart rate monitor to read Peter's vitals, staying silent the whole time.

"Uh, Mr. Stark? No offence, but you ... you look like shit."

Tony looks at him and shakes his head, smiling in amusement. "Yeah, well, you don't look too hot yourself, Parker."

Peter doesn't really know what to say, so he opts for the first thing he can think of to fill the silence. "What - uh - where am I?"

"You're in a state-of-the-art medical research facility in New York. We're not too far from the Tower."

"M-medical research?" He can feel the blood draining from his face even as he says it.

"Relax. I haven't shared your secret, Spiderling. Helen Cho was here, and she's just about the best possible doctor to treat you. She's worked with some of the Avengers before. Plus, they have the strong shit that Bruce designed to knock out Steve."

Peter lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "What happened?"

"You don't remember?" Tony's face is grave. "There was a bomb. Turns out, the guy we were meeting was a raging psychopath who wanted to kill me because I was rude to him at the last meeting. I get people like that from time to time.

"Yeah, me too."

The heart rate monitor beeps steadily, doing little to fill the pained silence that fills the hospital room.

"For fuck's sake, Peter." Tony sits down heavily on the side of his bed. "Should I have let you die? Were you ever going to tell me? Were you just _using_ me this whole time?"

"What? No! Of course not! I - "

"Shut up, kid. That was a rhetorical question. The _adult_ is talking. And what he is saying is _what the hell were you thinking?_ I don't get it. I really don't. How did you even know there was a bomb?"

Peter swallows. "I have a - a - I guess it's kind of a sixth sense? Tells me when there's danger."

"Jesus. So your natural response is to run straight into it? What was it, Peter, teenage angst? Academic Decathlon wasn't good enough for you? So you just decided to put your life on the line _every single day_ to stop some kid from losing their backpack? _Jesus_. Do you even know how much danger you were putting yourself in?"

"I - "

"No. Don't talk. I've been mapping this out in my head for a week. Shut it."

"A _week_?" Peter says, aghast.

"Yeah. That's how long you've been asleep, Parker. A week. After _you_ decided that you had to try and save my life. You know what? I almost get the Spiderman thing. Not the refusing to tell me, after _so many_ opportunities, not the stealing my tech, not the downright _recklessness_ , but yeah. I can sort of see your twisted reasoning. But what I _don't_ get is where the _fuck_ you got the idea that _you_ get to trade lives. That _you_ get to decide which one of us lives or dies. That _you_ get to sacrifice yourself for the likes of _me_ , a fucked up excuse for a human being, when _I'm_ the one who's meant to die! Don't you get it, Peter? You're not the one who gets to make that call!"

"Wouldn't you have done the same?" he asks quietly, because he really doesn't know what else to say.

"Of _course_ I would! But that doesn't mean that you're in the right! We are _very different people._ You have your whole life ahead of you. You're smart. You're a good kid. You're - whatever. I don't care. It should have been me to die, not you. You - "

"Mr. Stark, you're talking as if I'm dead."

Tony opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, looking furious. Peter shrinks back against his pillows. "Oh, you really don't get it, kid. You don't get it at all. You _died_. You flatlined twice on the operating table. Then you were on a ventilator for two days because you weren't strong enough to breathe on your own, because your chest was so fucking _wrecked_. Then you got an infection because there was a tiny piece of metal stuck inside you that your superhuman immune system decided, for whatever reason, to try and destroy by heating up your body until all the bacteria on it was killed - you had a fever of 107.4. You nearly died then as well. And every time you woke up, you would thrash around and tear out your IV and generally make life hell for Dr. Cho and all her coworkers - you know you broke someone's hand? - so they had to sedate you for pretty much the whole week because you kept making your condition worse."

As he talks, he keeps glancing down at his watch, as if for reassurance.

"I'm not going to apologise for saving your life, Mr. Stark."

Peter knows he's making things worse for himself, but he's stubborn. He forces himself to look up and meet Tony's eyes. They are shining with unshed tears. _Oh._

"Of course you're not, you goddamn idiot. You think that being a hero's all fun and games and flowers. You're _wrong_ , Peter. I'm going to find a doctor."

With that, he stands up and leaves the room. Breathing heavily, Peter stares at the closed door, a blank expanse of grey, and tries to process everything that's just happened. His eyes feel heavy and keep sliding shut of their own accord, but he wills himself to stay awake - at least until the doctor gets here and can answer some of his burning questions.

It feels like an eternity before the door finally swings open. A young Asian woman steps in, glossy black hair tied back into a tidy bun. "Peter?" she says, with a small smile. He feels infinitely reassured by her cool presence. "I'm Dr. Cho. I've been in charge of your case since you got here."

"A week ago?"

She nods. "Yes. You've been asleep for just over six days now. Do you mind if I check your vitals?"

"That's fine," he says.

"Thank you." She starts reading monitors and writing notes on a chart. "We've had a fair bit of trouble with you, Peter."

"Sorry."

"It's not your fault. You're enhanced, yes? That sped up your healing quite considerably, and doubtless saved your life. Our problem was that you were healing too efficiently for us to be able to operate. Parts of your tissue were already starting to grow _over_ the pieces of shrapnel lodged in your chest, which meant that our surgeons had to do further damage in order to remove them. Your increased bone density made it very difficult for us to break your ribs in order to enter your chest cavity. Mainly, because you healed so fast, there was a very high risk of healing _wrong_. That's why your body had such a powerful negative reaction to the piece of shrapnel still stuck inside you. My apologies for that."

Peter swallows, feeling a little queasy at the thought of people cracking open his chest to dig around with tweezers. "That's fine," he says faintly. "If you don't mind me asking, why are you telling me all this?"

"Tony asked me to outline the extent of your difficulties," she replies, putting down one chart and picking up another. _Of course he did._ "Do you want me to stop?"

"Yeah, that's probably for the best. Thanks, though." He tries to force the image out of his mind. "Uh ... how long do I have to stay here?"

"I was told that you're trying to keep your identity a secret, which means that you'll want to return to school after the end of spring break." She's watching him carefully. Peter nods. "I'd like you to stay here on bed rest for the rest of the vacation. After that, you can return to school, if you return here for check-ups every few days, and with no exercise. After a few weeks, we'll see about putting you on light exercise. It will probably be one or two months before you're back to normal; we don't know how fast your recovery process will be. The most important thing is not to strain yourself too soon."

"The rest of the vacation? But - my healing factor! I can't just - "

"Peter," Dr. Cho says gently, "it would take a normal person _months_ to recover from this, even if by some miracle they were lucky enough to survive."

He stares.

"I'm very sorry."

They look at each other in silence for a few moments. Peter can feel himself panicking, can hear the quiet _bleep_ s on the heart rate monitor getting faster, but doesn't attempt to steady himself. He can't stay here for the rest of spring break. He _can't_. He has stuff to do - homework - has to meet Ned - "Oh God," he says. "Aunt May."

"Tony said he's told her you're on a tour of all the Stark Industries buildings. Your phone is here, if you want to speak to her, but right now I would recommend getting some sleep. You've been through a lot, Peter."

"Dr. Cho?"

She pauses. "Yes?"

"Can you tell Mr. Stark he doesn't have to stay with me anymore? I'll be fine by myself. I've inconvenienced him this week, and he made it pretty clear that all of this is my fault." _He did more than that_ , he thinks bitterly, but stays quiet, because how does he explain to this total stranger that the misery of having the man he idolised scream at him, tell him that he's wrong, hurts far more than the piece of metal that was stuck through his chest? He's only going to cause Tony more problems by making him visit him every day than by cutting all contact now.

Dr. Cho looks at him in surprise. "Are you sure?" she asks cautiously. "You know that he barely left your side the whole time you were asleep? His friend Colonel Rhodes was bringing him food and clothes this whole time. Dragging him away to shower and sleep, even - not that he got much of that. You had him worried sick."

"I'm sure," Peter says harshly, and for a moment she looks at him with such sadness in her eyes that he considers changing his mind. But no. Everything about their earlier argument makes his insides twist painfully; he's had enough. He's had enough of Mr. Stark putting him first, shouting at him for trying to save his life, making him feel small and worthless for trying to do the right thing, for trying to save lives - _his_ life. This whole situation is brutally unfair, and the thought of facing Tony again after what he said makes Peter feel sick to his stomach.

He's clearly caused so much pain and anger that Tony would be better off without him, better off without all the worry that apparently comes with being around him. He trusts him not to tell anyone about Spiderman. That's not his secret to share.

And Peter? Peter will be just fine on his own.


End file.
